Name: Boiled Salad
Ingredients: boiled or baked onions (preferably Portugal); baked beetroot; cauliflower or broccoli; boiled celery; French beans; raw endive or lettuce; chervil or burnet; common salad dressing; minced onion (optional)

Why it works: Endive and chervil share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

Boil or bake the onions, beetroot, celery, and French beans until tender.
Cut the cauliflower or broccoli into florets and steam or boil until cooked.
Combine all the cooked vegetables in a large bowl.

Assemble and serve

Add a small amount of raw endive or lettuce, chervil, or burnet on top for freshness.
Drizzle with common salad dressing before serving.

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.

Endive + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together75 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Beetroot + endivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together132 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Beetroot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together126 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cauliflower + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together51 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Beetroot + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together146 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions: Provide savoury flavour and a tender, cooked bulk to the salad.
Beetroot: Adds earthy sweetness and a deep colour to the salad.
Cauliflower or broccoli: Contributes a firm, tender texture and mild flavour once cooked.
French beans: Add a tender, slightly crisp texture and fresh vegetable flavour.
Common salad dressing: Adds moisture and acidity that ties the cooked vegetables together.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, cauliflower, celery, beans, endive, chervil):

Lettucefits better
Turnipfits better
Chivefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, cauliflower, celery, beans, endive, chervil. 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.