Name: Macedoine with Vegetables
Ingredients: carrots; turnips; bouillon; French beans (haricot beans); broad beans; young onions; cauliflower; asparagus tops; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Turnip and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 286 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macedoine with Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Cut carrots and turnips to the same length.
Boil them in water for 10 to 15 minutes.
Drain on a cloth.
In a stewpan, bring bouillon to a boil.
Add the carrots and turnips, and stew until tender.
Boil the French beans, broad beans, young onions, cauliflower, and asparagus tops in salted water.
Drain all vegetables in a colander.
Arrange the carrots and turnips from the bouillon on a serving dish.

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.

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).
Cauliflower + asparagustop 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).
Turnip + asparagustop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together328 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, beans, cauliflower, asparagus):

Leekfits better
Beetrootfits better
Broccolifits better
Onionthe original

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