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Salad

Macedoins Op Vegetables

A mixed vegetable salad with optional seafood and eggs, dressed with a yolk-based dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 26 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and beetroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macedoins Op Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Choose seasonal vegetables and boil them in salted water.

  2. Drain and cut the vegetables into slices or shreds.

  3. Mix the prepared vegetables together.

Add the other ingredients

  1. Shell and add crayfish and prawns if desired.

  2. Add any leftover cold fish, chopped finely.

  3. Remove stones from olives and cut them into slices before adding.

Dress and serve

  1. Arrange all ingredients in a salad bowl, using hearts for garnishing.

  2. Pound the yolks of hard boiled eggs for the dressing.

  3. Mix all ingredients well and pour the dressing over the Macedoine or serve separately.

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.

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.

  1. Artichoke + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Artichoke + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Cauliflower + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Cauliflower + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starchy bulk that holds the salad together and absorbs the dressing.
Hard boiled eggs
Yolks are pounded into the dressing, adding richness and body.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that balances the sweetness of the vegetables.
Olives
Add briny flavour and a firm texture that contrasts with the soft vegetables.

The step that matters

Boil the vegetables in salted water. Vegetables cooked until just tender keep their colour and firmness. Overcooking makes them mushy and pale, so the salad loses texture once mixed and dressed.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, cauliflower, artichoke, asparagus, cucumber, beetroot, vinegar):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Endivefits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, cauliflower, artichoke, asparagus, cucumber, beetroot, vinegar. 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.

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