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Salad

Soup Meat Salad

A chilled salad of boiled meat, remoulade sauce, lettuce, beetroot, and hard boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Soup Meat Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Pour off the stock from the boiled meat.

  2. Press the meat into a basin with jelly stock, salt, and pepper.

  3. Once cold and firm, cut the meat into neat pieces.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the meat in a salad bowl.

  2. Pour remoulade sauce over the meat.

  3. Shred white lettuce leaves on top.

  4. Garnish with beetroot or hard boiled eggs.

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. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + beetroottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,682 recipes

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

  4. Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together579 recipes

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

  5. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled meat
Forms the main body of the salad and sets firm when chilled in its own jelly.
Jelly stock
Sets as it cools, binding the pressed meat into a firm, sliceable block.
Remoulade sauce
Adds moisture and tangy richness that coats the meat and lettuce.
White lettuce leaves
Adds a crisp, fresh texture that contrasts with the firm meat.

The step that matters

Pressing the meat into the basin. The meat must be packed tightly and then chilled until cold and firm. Gelatine in the stock sets as it cools, holding the pieces together so they can be cut neatly without crumbling.

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, sauce, lettuce, egg):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, sauce, lettuce, 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.

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