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Carrot Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Carrot Salad

Why it works: Grapefruit and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Carrot Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil young carrots until tender.

  2. Peel and cut them lengthwise.

  3. Drizzle with a little oil and vinegar, then set on ice.

  4. Peel the grapefruit and divide into sections, cutting each into three pieces.

  5. Save the juice that falls from the grapefruit and pour it over the carrots.

  6. Chill lettuce hearts on ice.

  7. Just before serving, place the carrots and grapefruit together on the lettuce cups and drizzle with French dressing.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Grapefruit + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + grapefruittop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together15 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + grapefruittop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, grapefruit, lettuce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, grapefruit, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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