Name: Fish Salad
Ingredients: cold white fish; fresh beans; peas; carrots (optional); beets; French dressing; mayonnaise; vinegar from capers; capers

Why it works: Beans and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,443 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Boil fresh fish with a little vinegar to help it flake.
Mix the flaked fish with fresh beans, peas, carrots, and beets.
Add French dressing and mix thoroughly with the fish.
Serve topped with mayonnaise made with vinegar from capers.
Garnish with a few capers on top.

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.

Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,443 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Beans + caperstop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together76 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Beans + peastop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together949 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,994 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Carrot + caperstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together288 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, beans, peas, vinegar, capers):

Shallotfits better
Lettucefits better
Mustardfits better
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, beans, peas, vinegar, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.