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Dutch Salad

Salad of anchovies, herring, sausage or ham, roast fowl or veal, beet-roots, pickled cucumbers, potatoes, capers, olives, eggs, oil, tarragon vinegar, white pepper, French mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 379 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 Lyons sausage (or smoked ham) into dice.

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

  5. Dice the beet-roots and pickled cucumbers.

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

Mix and dress

  1. Add the capers, minced egg yolks, and whites, and the 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. Capers + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cucumber + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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, starchy texture.
Herring
Adds a rich, savoury fish flavour that carries through the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Contribute creamy yolk and firmer white for texture and richness.
Pickled cucumbers
Add acidity and a crisp bite that contrasts with the softer ingredients.
Beet-roots
Add earthy sweetness and a vivid colour to the salad.

The step that matters

Mixing the dressing into the salad. Oil and vinegar separate quickly, so the dressing should be beaten well with the mustard, which helps emulsify it, and poured over just before serving so the potatoes do not absorb it unevenly or turn mushy.

Swap the potato

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

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

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