Name: Roast Beef Salad
Ingredients: cold roast beef; 2 tablespoons mustard; ½ cup sweet or sour cream; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons capers; 2 tablespoons caper vinegar

Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Roast Beef Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

Cut the cold roast beef into small pieces.
In a bowl, mix the mustard, sweet or sour cream, pepper, salt, capers, and caper vinegar.

Dress and serve

Pour the mixture over the beef and toss to combine.
Serve as a salad for tea.

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.

Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together624 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,088 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef: Provides the main body and meaty, chewy texture of the salad.
Mustard: Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the cream.
Sweet or sour cream: Adds moisture and richness that coats the beef and softens the sharpness of the dressing.
Capers: Add briny, sharp bursts of flavour.
Caper vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mustard, cream, pepper, vinegar):

Tarragonfits better
Celeryfits better
Garlicfits about as well
Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mustard, cream, pepper, vinegar. 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.