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Salad

Macedoine Salad

A mixed vegetable salad of boiled carrot, turnip, peas, and French beans seasoned with salt, pepper, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macedoine Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and wash the carrot and turnip. Cut them with a vegetable scoop.

  2. Put them into separate saucepans of boiling salted water. Cook the carrot for 15 minutes and the turnip for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain and let them cool thoroughly.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place them in a salad bowl with peas, French beans, salt, pepper, and sweet oil. Toss gently to combine and serve.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Peas + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together949 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot
Holds its shape when cooked and adds sweetness and colour to the salad.
Turnip
Adds firm texture and a mildly sharp, peppery bite to the salad.
Sweet oil
Coats the cooked vegetables, adding moisture and richness to the salad.

The step that matters

Cooling the vegetables thoroughly before assembling. Vegetables that are still warm or wet can make the oil slide off and soften the other pieces. Draining and cooling them fully helps the dressing cling and keeps the salad texture firm.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, beans, pepper):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, beans, pepper. 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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