Skip to main content

Baby Beet Salad

"Cold and refreshing. I don't eat the onions, but their flavor infuses into the dish. Adjust orange juice and vinegar if too sweet or not sweet enough. It tastes even better the next day!"

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mandarin orange and apple cider vinegar work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and 8 recipes mention both. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

The recipe

8 servings
Prep15 min

Ingredients

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Drain the baby beets and mandarin oranges, then rinse the beets and cut each one into quarters.

  2. Cut the purple onion into chunks.

  3. In a large bowl, stir together the apple cider vinegar and orange juice.

  4. Add the beets, mandarin oranges, and onion chunks to the bowl and toss gently to coat them in the liquid.

  5. Cover the bowl and refrigerate until well chilled, at least 1 hour, stirring once halfway through.

  6. Stir again and serve cold.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mandarin orange + apple cider vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Mandarin orange + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together87 recipes

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

  3. Onion + apple cider vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Apple cider vinegar + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Mandarin orange + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together83 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mandarin orange, apple cider vinegar, orange):

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mandarin orange, apple cider vinegar, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).