Name: A Macedoine
Ingredients: carrots; turnips; button onions; cucumbers; peas; French beans; asparagus; knobs of cauliflower; artichoke bottoms

Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

A Macedoine

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch and boil each type of vegetable separately.
Cut the vegetables into small, fancy shapes.
Drain the vegetables and combine them in a stewpan.
Cover the vegetables with supreme sauce.

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.

Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together584 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together286 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Asparagus + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Beans + asparagustop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together292 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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, cucumber, peas, beans, asparagus, cauliflower):

Lettucefits better
Beetrootfits better
Leekfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, cucumber, peas, beans, asparagus, cauliflower. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.