Skip to main content
Main

Dutch Salad

A salad of green tomatoes, onions, pickles, cauliflower, celery, and green peppers seasoned with salt, mustard, turmeric, sugar, flour, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cauliflower and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 514 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dutch Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, pickles, cauliflower, celery, and green peppers together.

  2. Cover the chopped vegetables with 1 cup of salt and water.

  3. Let them stand for 24 hours.

  4. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  5. Drain the mixture very dry.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the mustard, turmeric, sugar, and flour with enough water to form a paste.

  2. Bring the vinegar to a boil.

  3. Pour the paste into the boiling vinegar.

  4. Stir until it thickens to a thin custard.

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. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the dressing so it sets into a thin custard when heated in the vinegar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharp vinegar and salt.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the salad its sharp, tangy flavor.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor to the dressing.
Turmeric
Gives the dressing its yellow color and a mild, earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Stir the paste into the boiling vinegar. Flour thickens only when heated in liquid, and lumps form if the paste is poured in unevenly or the mixture is not stirred. Stirring while it cooks keeps the custard smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cauliflower, celery, pepper, mustard, turmeric, sugar):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cauliflower, celery, pepper, mustard, turmeric, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes