Name: Russian Salad
Ingredients: 355g potatoes; cauliflower; carrots; Spanish onions; turnips; capers; artichokes; olives; butter

Why it works: Capers and artichoke share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Russian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Parboil the potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, Spanish onions, turnips, capers, artichokes, and olives.
Drain and dry the vegetables.
Warm them in butter.
Drain again and let them cool.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Capers + artichoketop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together77 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together140 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together145 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together286 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together70 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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cauliflower, carrot, turnip, capers, artichoke, olive):

Beetrootfits better
Lettucefits better
Endivefits better
Onionthe original

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