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Salad

Herring Salad

A cold salad of chopped herrings, potatoes, beets, onions, apples, veal, eggs, dressed with oil, vinegar, broth, pepper, mustard, and sour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Herring Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Soak the herrings overnight.

  2. Cut the soaked herrings into very small pieces.

  3. Cook and peel the potatoes, then chop them.

  4. Chop the red beets, onions, sour apples, and roasted veal.

  5. Chop the hard boiled eggs.

Make the salad

  1. Mix all the chopped ingredients with sweet oil, vinegar, broth, pepper, and mustard to taste.

  2. Add a spoonful of thick sour cream to improve the sauce.

  3. Let the salad stand overnight in an earthen dish.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Herrings
Provide the main fish flavour and the salad's bulk of chopped texture.
Potatoes
Add starchy body that soaks up the dressing and gives the salad substance.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a tangy creaminess to the sauce.
Sweet oil
Carries fat-soluble flavour and keeps the chopped pieces moist and glossy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavours and balances the fish and fat.

The step that matters

Letting the salad stand overnight. Resting lets the chopped ingredients absorb the oil, vinegar and seasonings, so flavours blend and the dressing thickens into the pieces. Serving too soon leaves the salad tasting separate and sharp.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, veal, egg, vinegar, pepper, mustard):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, veal, egg, vinegar, pepper, mustard. 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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