Skip to main content
Main

Russian Salad

A cold salad of cubed cooked vegetables mixed with a vinaigrette of vinegar, salt, mustard, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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.

  2. Cut the cooked vegetables into ½ inch cubes.

Combine and dress

  1. Combine the string beans, peas, beets, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, carrots, pickles, celery, and cabbage in a large bowl.

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

  3. Pour the dressing over the vegetable mixture and toss to combine.

Chill

  1. Chill before serving.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beets
Add color and natural sweetness to the salad.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the sweet vegetables.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps emulsify the dressing.
Potatoes
Supply starchy body and bulk that holds the salad together.

Swap the peas

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

  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, mustard. 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.

More russian salad recipes

Dressing 6 See all 57 →

You might also like

Sweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes