Name: Carrot Salad
Ingredients: carrots; French dressing; chopped parsley; lettuce or celery; rye or wheat flakes

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Carrot Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Grind, chop, or slice the carrots.
Mix the carrots with French dressing.
Add chopped parsley, lettuce, or celery.
Serve with rye or wheat flakes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + ryetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together23 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together976 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Carrot + ryetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).