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Salad

Carrot Salad

A salad of boiled carrots and eggs dressed with butter, mustard, vinegar, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Carrot Salad

Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Carrot Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the carrots until tender.

  2. Chop the carrots finely and mix with the chopped whites of the hard boiled eggs.

  3. In a bowl, combine the yolks of the eggs, butter, pepper, salt, vinegar, and mustard. Beat until smooth.

  4. Pour the sauce over the carrot and egg mixture 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.

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.

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

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the bulk of the salad and provide sweetness and texture once tender.
Hard boiled eggs
Add soft, rich body; the whites give bulk and the yolks enrich the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce, giving it a smooth, mellow texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances its richness.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the sauce for a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Beat the sauce until smooth. Beating the egg yolks with butter, vinegar and mustard helps the fat and liquid emulsify. If it is not beaten well, the sauce can look greasy or separated rather than smooth and cohesive over the salad.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, pepper, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper, vinegar, mustard. 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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