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Hot Vegetables Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, carrots, beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli, and turnips dressed with olive oil, tarragon vinegar, salt, pepper, onion, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and broccoli match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 127 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Hot Vegetables Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the potatoes, carrots, beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli, and turnips until hot.

  2. In a large bowl, break up the vegetables with a wide-pronged fork.

  3. Add the salt, white pepper, onion, and parsley to the vegetables.

  4. Stir in the Lucca oil and then the tarragon vinegar.

  5. Serve in a salad bowl. Optionally, add finely chopped raw cucumber in summer.

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. Cauliflower + broccolitop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together127 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  4. Cauliflower + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Broccoli + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 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

Potatoes
Provide the bulk and soft, starchy body of the salad.
Lucca oil
Adds fat and moistness, carrying flavour through the warm vegetables.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Stir in the oil and vinegar while the vegetables are still hot. Warm vegetables absorb oil and vinegar more readily, so the dressing spreads evenly and flavour penetrates the pieces instead of pooling on the surface.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, carrot, beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli, turnip, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, carrot, beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli, turnip, 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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