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Dutch Salad

A salad of anchovies, herring, sausage or ham, beetroot, pickled cucumbers, boiled potatoes, capers, eggs, olives, dressed with oil, tarragon vinegar, pepper, and French mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 231 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dutch Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Wash, split, and bone the anchovies, then roll each one up.

  2. Wash, split, and bone the herring, then cut it into small pieces.

  3. Cut the Bologna or Lyon's sausage (or smoked ham) into dice.

  4. Cut the cold roast fowl or veal into dice.

  5. Dice the beetroot and pickled cucumbers in equal quantity.

  6. Cut the cold boiled potatoes into larger dice, using at least 3 times as much potato as any other ingredient.

Make the salad

  1. Add the capers, minced egg yolks, minced egg whites, and olives to the mixture.

  2. Mix all ingredients well, reserving the olives and anchovies for garnish.

  3. Beat together oil, Tarragon vinegar, white pepper, and French mustard to taste.

  4. Pour the dressing over the salad and serve.

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. Beetroot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beetroot + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together345 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beetroot + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together330 recipes

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

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, giving body and a soft, absorbent base for the dressing.
Herring
Adds a rich, salty, oily flavour that gives the salad its main character.
Anchovies
Contribute a deep, savoury saltiness that seasons the whole salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add creamy richness from the yolks and a firmer texture from the whites.
Beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and a vivid colour to the salad.
Oil
Provides fat and smoothness in the dressing, carrying flavour across the salad.

The step that matters

Mix all ingredients well. Thorough mixing spreads the strongly flavoured herring, anchovies and mustard evenly so no bite is overpowering, while the diced potato is kept in larger pieces so it does not turn mushy and pasty.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, beetroot, cucumber, capers, egg, olive):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, beetroot, cucumber, capers, egg, olive. 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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