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Macedoine Salad

A salad of blanched young carrots, turnips, beetroot, French beans, celery roots, green peas, asparagus tops, and 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 the vegetables

  1. Blanch and boil equal quantities of the vegetables separately.

  2. Dry them in a clean cloth.

  3. Once cold, cut the vegetables into dice about ⅜ inch.

Dress and serve

  1. Mix the diced vegetables in a salad bowl with a wooden fork and spoon.

  2. Sprinkle with Ravigote sauce.

  3. Add a good amount of mayonnaise sauce and mix thoroughly.

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
Adds sweetness, colour and a firm, tender bite to the salad.
Turnips
Contribute a mild, slightly peppery flavour and firm texture once cooked and diced.
Beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and a deep colour that tints the whole salad.
French beans
Provide a crisp-tender texture and fresh vegetable flavour.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and creaminess, binding the diced vegetables together and carrying flavour.

The step that matters

Cutting and mixing after cooling. Vegetables must be fully cold and dry before dressing, because warm or wet pieces release water and thin the mayonnaise, making the salad soggy and loose.

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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