Name: Carrot Salad
Ingredients: 12 small carrots, grated; 2 small onions, grated; 2 hard boiled eggs, chopped; 5 small tender celery stalks, chopped; a little parsley, chopped; mayonnaise dressing (made with olive oil, paprika, and salt)

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

12 small carrots, grated
2 small onions, grated
2 hard boiled eggs, chopped
5 small tender celery stalks, chopped
a little parsley, chopped
mayonnaise dressing (made with olive oil, paprika, and salt)

Directions

Prepare

Grate the carrots and onions.
Chop the hard boiled eggs and celery.

Assemble

Combine all ingredients in a bowl.
Add mayonnaise dressing to taste.
Garnish with parsley.

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).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Carrots: Provide the bulk of the salad, adding crunch, mild sweetness and moisture.
Onions: Add sharp, aromatic flavour that balances the sweetness of the carrots.
Hard boiled eggs: Add soft, creamy richness and body to the salad.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and a fresh, slightly savoury crunch.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and moisture that bind the vegetables and eggs together.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, egg, celery, parsley, olive):

Parsnipfits better
Spinachfits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, egg, celery, parsley, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.