Name: Green Pea and Bean Salad
Ingredients: cooked green peas; cooked French beans; 1 small cooked beetroot; 2 hard-boiled eggs; 1 teaspoon finely-chopped parsley; 1 clove garlic; salad dressing

Why it works: Beans and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 215 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Green Pea and Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine cooked green peas and cooked French beans.
Chop the cooked beetroot and add it to the bowl.
Slice the hard-boiled eggs and add them as well.
Finely chop the garlic and parsley, then mix them into the salad.
Drizzle with salad dressing and toss gently to combine.

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.

Beans + beetroottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together215 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together949 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Beetroot + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together745 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,935 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Add protein-rich body and a soft, creamy contrast to the crisp vegetables.
Cooked green peas: Provide the sweet, tender bulk of the salad.
Cooked french beans: Add firm texture and bulk alongside the peas.
Cooked beetroot: Adds earthy sweetness and a deep colour that tints the salad.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, beans, beetroot, egg, parsley, garlic):

Capersfits better
Cuminfits better
Tarragonfits better
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, beans, beetroot, egg, parsley, garlic. 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.