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Nantese Salad

A salad of caramelized onions, sardines, mayonnaise, curry powder, hard‑boiled eggs, and herbs served on watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Nantese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and bake the onions

  1. Peel the onions.

  2. Scoop out a teaspoonful from the center of each onion.

  3. Fill the hollow with butter.

  4. Season the onions with coarse sea salt and pepper.

  5. Place the onions in a baking pan.

  6. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) until browned.

  7. When the onions are cool, cut them into quarters.

Prepare the sardines and mayonnaise

  1. Skin the sardines.

  2. Remove the bones from the sardines.

  3. Cut the sardines in half.

  4. Mix the curry powder into the mayonnaise.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Arrange the onion quarters on a bed of watercress.

  2. Lay the sardine halves on the onion pieces.

  3. Pour the seasoned mayonnaise over the sardines.

  4. Garnish the salad with slices of hard-boiled eggs.

  5. Sprinkle chopped parsley, tarragon, and chervil over the salad.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tarragon + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish onions
Baked until browned, they provide the sweet, soft base of the salad.
Butter
Fills the onion hollows, adding richness and moisture as the onions bake.
Sardines
Provide the rich, savoury fish that forms the main protein of the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, carrying the curry powder and coating the sardines.
Curry powder
Adds warm, aromatic spice that flavours the mayonnaise dressing.
Hard boiled eggs
Add firm texture and mild richness as a garnish.

The step that matters

Baking the onions until browned. Onions cooked too briefly stay sharp and raw-tasting, while over-baking dries them out. Browning develops sweetness through caramelisation, so watch for even colour rather than a fixed time.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, egg, parsley, tarragon, chervil, watercress):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, egg, parsley, tarragon, chervil, watercress. 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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