Name: Bean Salad
Ingredients: Cold boiled broad beans; Garlic; Chopped parsley; Olive oil; Pepper; Coarse sea salt; Vinegar

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the skins from the cold boiled broad beans, leaving only the green part.
Rub the salad bowl with garlic.
Add chopped parsley, olive oil, pepper, and coarse sea salt, then mix well.
Add vinegar last.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,665 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,308 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,470 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Broad beans: Provide the main body and mild, starchy texture of the salad.
Olive oil: Adds fat and richness, coating the beans and carrying the flavour of the herbs and garlic.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the richness of the oil.

Swap the beans

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

Chickpeafits better
Black-eyed peafits better
Lentilsfits about as well
Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, parsley, olive, pepper, 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.