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Salad

Beetroot and Potato Salad

A salad of boiled beetroot and potatoes, seasoned with salt, vinegar, olive oil, chervil, and chives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beetroot and Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beetroot

  1. Peel the beetroot and cut it into slices.

  2. Place the beetroot slices in a small bowl, season with salt and vinegar, and let sit for 6 hours.

Dress the potatoes

  1. Steam the potatoes in their skins until tender, then peel and slice them while still warm.

  2. Pour the beetroot juice over the warm potatoes, ensuring they are fully covered.

  3. Season the potatoes with salt, pepper, olive oil, chervil, and chives.

  4. Let the potatoes steep in the beetroot juice overnight for better flavor and color.

  5. Before serving, pour off some of the excess liquid.

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. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beetroot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beetroot + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together611 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Potato + cherviltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together96 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

Beetroot
Provides the colour and earthy flavour, and its juice is used to dress the potatoes.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and soak up the beetroot juice and seasoning.
Olive oil
Adds fat and mouthfeel, carrying the herb and seasoning flavours.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the beetroot and sharpens the overall flavour.

The step that matters

Steeping the potatoes in the beetroot juice overnight. Warm potatoes are porous and absorb colour and flavour quickly, so covering them fully and allowing time lets the juice penetrate evenly. Pouring off excess liquid before serving keeps the salad from tasting watery or overly sharp.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, vinegar, pepper, olive, chervil, chive):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, vinegar, pepper, olive, chervil, chive. 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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