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Salad

Russian Salad

A salad of chopped vegetables dressed with vinegar, salt, mustard, pepper, and celery seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Russian Salad

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Russian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cook all vegetables until tender, then cut them into 1-inch cubes.

  2. Let the vegetables cool.

Dress and combine

  1. In a bowl, mix the vinegar, salt, mustard, and pepper to make the dressing.

  2. Combine the cooled vegetables with the dressing and mix well.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Beans + sweet potatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Beans + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

  5. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Adds sweetness and a soft, starchy body that holds its shape in the salad.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing and brightens the vegetables.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and emulsifying character that helps the dressing cling to the vegetables.
Pickles
Contribute acidity and crunch that balance the sweetness of the root vegetables.

The step that matters

Cool the vegetables before dressing them. Warm vegetables absorb dressing unevenly and can soften further, while cooled pieces hold their texture and take on the vinegar mixture more evenly.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, sweet potato, potato, carrot, celery, cabbage, vinegar):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, sweet potato, potato, carrot, celery, cabbage, vinegar. 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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