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Vegetable Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, carrots, eggs, celery, cucumber, onions, peas, and pimientos, dressed with cheese, paprika, and a cooked dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the potatoes and carrots until tender, then dice them.

  2. Chop the celery, cucumbers, onions, and mix with the diced potatoes and carrots.

  3. Chop the egg whites and add to the vegetable mixture, reserving the yolks.

Dress and serve

  1. Prepare a cooked dressing (recipe not provided) and mix it through the vegetables.

  2. Crumble the egg yolks and mix with an equal amount of grated cheese and enough paprika to color it.

  3. Serve the salad on lettuce leaves or chicory, topping with the egg and cheese mixture and a slice of pimiento.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and give it a tender, starchy body.
Eggs
Whites add chopped texture and body; yolks, crumbled, make a rich topping.
Carrots
Add sweetness, color and a firm, tender bite to the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, slightly sharp flavor.
Cucumbers
Add moisture and a cool, crisp crunch.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, carrot, egg, celery, cucumber, onion, cheese):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, carrot, egg, celery, cucumber, onion, cheese. 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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