Name: Boiled Salad
Ingredients: 2 medium onions, boiled or baked; 1 medium beetroot, baked; 1 cup cauliflower or broccoli, boiled; 1 cup celery, boiled; 1 cup French beans, boiled; 1 small handful raw endive or lettuce; 1 small handful chervil or burnet; Salad dressing to taste; 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

2 medium onions, boiled or baked
1 medium beetroot, baked
1 cup cauliflower or broccoli, boiled
1 cup celery, boiled
1 cup French beans, boiled
1 small handful raw endive or lettuce
1 small handful chervil or burnet
Salad dressing to taste
Minced onion (optional)

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

Boil or bake the onions and beetroot until tender.
Boil the cauliflower, broccoli, celery, and French beans until cooked.

Assemble and serve

Combine the boiled vegetables in a serving bowl.
Add the raw endive or lettuce, chervil or burnet on top for garnish.
Drizzle with salad dressing and mix gently.
Serve immediately for a fresh and wholesome dish.

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: Become tender and sweet when boiled or baked, adding body to the salad.
Beetroot: Baking softens it and adds earthy sweetness and a deep colour to the salad.
Cauliflower or broccoli: Boiling softens the florets so they add bulk and a mild, tender texture.
Celery: Boiling softens its fibres while keeping some crunch and a mild flavour.
French beans: Boiling makes them tender and adds a fresh, green vegetable element.

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.