Name: Vegetable Salad
Ingredients: equal weights of carrots; equal weights of peas; equal weights of turnips; equal weights of asparagus; equal weights of French beans; 1 tablespoon Ravigote (tarragon, burnet, chives, garden-cress, and chervil)

Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

equal weights of carrots
equal weights of peas
equal weights of turnips
equal weights of asparagus
equal weights of French beans
1 tablespoon Ravigote (tarragon, burnet, chives, garden-cress, and chervil)

Directions

Boil the carrots, peas, turnips, asparagus, and French beans separately until tender.
Dry the vegetables with a clean cloth.
Once cold, cut the vegetables into dice of ¼ to ⅜ inch; cut the French beans into squares.
Arrange the French beans in the center of a dish.
Surround the French beans with rows of carrots, peas, turnips, and asparagus in equal quantities.
Sprinkle the surface with Ravigote, which should be finely minced and prepared beforehand.
Serve the mayonnaise sauce on the side.

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.

Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together824 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Chive + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together370 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together184 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together589 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, asparagus, beans, tarragon, chive, chervil):

Lentilsfits better
Chestnutfits better
Chickpeafits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, asparagus, beans, tarragon, chive, chervil. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.