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Salad

Beetroot and Macaroni Salad

A salad of cooked macaroni and beetroot dressed with pepper, sea salt, oil, and tarragon vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 184 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beetroot and Macaroni Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the cooked macaroni and cooked beetroot into 1-inch pieces.

  2. In a bowl, dress the macaroni and beetroot with pepper, coarse sea salt, oil, and tarragon vinegar.

  3. For best results, prepare this dish a few hours in advance to allow the macaroni to absorb the color from the beetroot.

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. Beetroot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beetroot + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,682 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked macaroni
Forms the bulk of the salad and absorbs the beetroot colour over time.
Cooked beetroot
Provides sweetness, earthy flavour and the deep red colour that spreads to the pasta.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the sweetness of the beetroot.
Oil
Carries flavour and coats the pasta and beetroot, adding moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Resting the salad in advance. Letting the dressed pasta sit for a few hours gives the macaroni time to take up colour and flavour from the beetroot. Serving too soon leaves the pasta pale and the dish less evenly coloured.

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, tarragon, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, tarragon, 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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