Name: Beetroot Salad
Ingredients: slices of beetroot; salad dressing; shredded celery; finely-scraped horseradish

Why it works: Beetroot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 209 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beetroot Salad

Ingredients

slices of beetroot
salad dressing
shredded celery
finely-scraped horseradish

Directions

Arrange slices of beetroot overlapping each other closely.
Moisten with salad dressing.
Garnish with shredded celery or tufts of finely-scraped horseradish.

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.

Beetroot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together209 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together835 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Beetroot + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together652 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).