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Salad

Vegetable Salad

A salad of diced beets, carrots, celery, onion, and walnuts dressed with a boiled egg, sugar, flour, mustard, vinegar, butter, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cook beets and carrots separately until tender, then cut into dice.

  2. Finely chop celery and onion, then mix all vegetables together.

  3. Add chopped walnuts if desired, and season with salt and pepper.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, cream together eggs and sugar.

  2. Stir in flour and mustard with a little water until smooth.

  3. Add vinegar and water, then mix in butter.

  4. Boil in a double boiler until thick, then thin with sweet cream.

Serve

  1. Pour dressing over the mixed vegetables.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they set during cooking and add richness.
Flour
Thickens the dressing so it coats the vegetables rather than running off.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the dressing.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Beets
Provide the main earthy body and colour of the salad.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a rounder flavour to the dressing.

The step that matters

Boil in a double boiler until thick. Egg and flour thicken only gently over indirect heat. Direct high heat can scramble the eggs and leave lumps, so the dressing should be cooked slowly and stirred until it coats a spoon.

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, onion, pepper, egg, sugar, flour):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, onion, pepper, egg, sugar, flour. 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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