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Salad

Macedoine Salad

A salad of diced young carrots, turnips, beetroot, French beans, celery roots, green peas, asparagus peas, artichoke roots, dressed with ravigote and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macedoine Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch and boil the vegetables separately until tender.

  2. Cool and dry them in a clean cloth.

  3. Cut the cooked vegetables into dice about ⅜ inch.

Assemble and dress

  1. Mix the diced vegetables in a salad bowl.

  2. Sprinkle with Ravigote sauce and season with mayonnaise 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.

  1. Turnip + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beetroot + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Asparagus + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 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

Young carrots
Provide the sweet, firm body and colour of the salad once cooked.
Turnips
Add firm, mild-flavoured dice that hold their shape after boiling.
Beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and strong colour to the mixed salad.
French beans
Contribute tender texture and a fresh, green vegetable flavour.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and creaminess that coats the diced vegetables.
Ravigote sauce
Adds acidity and herbal sharpness that brightens the vegetables.

The step that matters

Drying the cooked vegetables. Any water left on the diced vegetables thins the dressing and makes it run, so the sauces cannot cling evenly. Drying them in a clean cloth after cooling keeps the sauces coating each piece.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, beetroot, beans, celery, asparagus, artichoke):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, beetroot, beans, celery, asparagus, artichoke. 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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