Skip to main content
Salad

Macedoine Salad

A salad of blanched and boiled vegetables mixed with mayonnaise sauce and ravigote.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beetroot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 336 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macedoine Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Blanch and boil equal quantities of the vegetables separately: young carrots, turnips, beetroot, French beans, celery roots, green peas, asparagus peas, and artichoke roots.

  2. Cool and dry the vegetables in a clean cloth.

  3. Cut the cooked vegetables into neat dice, about ⅜ inch.

Assemble and dress

  1. Mix the diced vegetables in a salad bowl.

  2. Sprinkle with Ravigote and season with mayonnaise sauce.

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.

  1. Beetroot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beans + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together292 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beans + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together215 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

French beans
Provide a tender-crisp texture and fresh, mild flavour once blanched.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a soft, tender bite to the diced mix.
Mayonnaise sauce
Coats the diced vegetables, adding richness and moisture to bind the salad.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness, colour and a firm, tender texture when diced.
Beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and a strong colour that tints the whole salad.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly peppery flavour and firm texture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Cool and dry the vegetables thoroughly. Vegetables must be cooled and patted dry before dressing, because surface water thins the mayonnaise sauce and dilutes its flavour, leaving the salad watery and loose.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, sauce, carrot, celery, beetroot, turnip, asparagus):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, sauce, carrot, celery, beetroot, turnip, asparagus. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SaladCarrot Salad24 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipes