Name: Beet Salad
Ingredients: beets; vinegar; 1 teaspoon anise seed; salt; pepper; sugar

Why it works: Anise and pepper share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 80 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beet Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the beets carefully to avoid breaking the skin.
Boil the beets in water without salt for 2 hours.
Remove the beets, skin them while still hot, and slice them thin.
Place the slices in a crock and pour vinegar over them, adding the anise seed.
Store in a cool place.

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.

Anise + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together80 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Anise + sugartop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together328 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Vinegar + anisetop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).