Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Salade Jardiniere
Ingredients
Directions
Slice the root vegetables and boil them in salted water until tender.
Use a small vegetable cutter to stamp out star or flower shapes from the cooked vegetables.
Stamp out star shapes from cooked beets and keep them in vinegar separately.
Boil asparagus heads, green peas, and cut string beans into diamond shapes.
Mix all vegetables (except beets and some peas or asparagus) with enough oil and vinegar to moisten.
Transfer the mixture between bowls a few times to combine.
Pile the mixture in the center of a serving dish and pour thin mayonnaise over it.
Scatter the star-shaped beets and green peas on top.
Arrange blocks of amber jelly, lettuce leaves, cress, and flowers around the edge of the dish.
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.
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Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together590 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,097 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Rutabaga + parsniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together74 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the rutabaga
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, parsnip, celery, asparagus, peas, beans):
- Leekfits better
- Beetrootfits better
- Lettucefits better
- Rutabagathe original
Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, parsnip, celery, asparagus, peas, beans. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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