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Salad

Carrot Salad

A salad of boiled carrots, cold boiled mutton, celery, capers, and parsley dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Carrot Salad

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Carrot Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold boiled mutton into small pieces and place them in a salad bowl.

  2. Mince the celery and capers, then sprinkle them over the mutton.

  3. Pour the dressing over the mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Slice the cold carrots and layer them on top.

  2. Garnish with chopped parsley 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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Celery + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 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

Cold boiled mutton
Forms the main body of the salad and provides savoury, meaty substance.
Cold boiled carrots
Add sweetness and a firm, tender texture as the top layer.
Celery
Adds a crisp texture and fresh, slightly bitter flavour.
Capers
Add sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the meat.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, mutton, celery, parsley):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, mutton, celery, parsley. 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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