Skip to main content
Salad

Hamburg Salad

A cold salad of boiled potatoes, celery, smoked fish, dried meats, onions, garlic, pickled peppers, eggs, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Hamburg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats and vegetables

  1. Boil the dried beef and tongue for several hours until cooked.

  2. Blanch the celery by parboiling it.

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, mix the potatoes, celery, smoked halibut, dried beef, red smoked tongue, onion, garlic, and red peppers.

  2. Drizzle oil into the mixture until it looks rich and glossy.

  3. Add vinegar and mix well.

Garnish and serve

  1. Chop the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and cut the whites into strips for garnish.

  2. Top the salad with the chopped yolks and arrange the egg whites on top.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Potato + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the bulk and starchy body that holds the salad together.
Oil
Adds richness and gloss, coating the other ingredients with fat.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the rich, smoky meats and oil.
Smoked halibut
Contributes smoky flavour and savoury depth to the salad.
Dried beef
Contributes salty, concentrated meaty flavour and chewy texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add creamy yolk richness and firm white texture as the garnish.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, celery, beef, onion, garlic, pepper, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, beef, onion, garlic, pepper, egg. 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

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes