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Salad

Apple Salad with Herrings or Sardellen

A salad of diced apples, pickled herrings or sardines, hard‑boiled eggs, onion, capers, salad oil, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,381 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Apple Salad with Herrings or Sardellen

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the herrings or sardines, then chop them finely.

Make the salad

  1. Mix the chopped fish with salad oil, vinegar, hard-boiled eggs (chopped finely), and capers.

  2. Cut the apples into tiny dice and add them to the mixture.

  3. Season with pepper and sugar, then mix all thoroughly.

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 + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Apple + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,884 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Capers + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,453 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide crisp texture and a fresh, lightly sweet flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the oil and fish.
Salad oil
Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavour and softening the fish.
Sardines or hard-boiled eggs
Supply the main protein and body of the salad.

The step that matters

Chop the apples into tiny dice and mix thoroughly. Apple flesh browns once cut, so dicing and mixing promptly keeps the salad fresh-looking. Thorough mixing spreads the acidic vinegar and sugar evenly so no bite tastes sharp or bland.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, onion, capers, vinegar, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, onion, capers, vinegar, 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.

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