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Salad

Marble Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, onions, beets, and lettuce dressed with French dressing and garnished with parsley and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Marble Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut enough balls from raw potatoes to make 2 cups using a vegetable cutter.

  2. Boil the potato balls in salted water until tender but not broken.

  3. Peel and boil the white button onions in salted water until slightly tender.

  4. Boil the tender beets in salted water.

  5. Cut balls from the beets with a vegetable cutter when cold.

  6. Chill all ingredients separately.

Assemble and dress

  1. Cover a platter with lettuce.

  2. Marinate the potato balls with French dressing.

  3. Roll each potato ball in minced parsley and celery leaves.

  4. Heap the potato balls in the center of the platter.

  5. Arrange the onions next to the potato balls and the beets around the outside against the lettuce.

  6. Pour French dressing over the onions and beets, one tablespoon at a time, without disturbing the potato balls.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  5. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the firm, tender balls that make up the bulk of the salad.
White button onions
Add a mild, sharp flavour and firm texture next to the potatoes.
Beets
Provide colour contrast and a sweet, earthy flavour.
French dressing
Marinates the potato balls and moistens the onions and beets, adding acidity and fat.

The step that matters

Pouring the dressing over the onions and beets. Adding dressing slowly, a tablespoon at a time, lets the vegetables absorb it gradually. Pouring too fast floods the platter and can disturb the arranged potato balls, spoiling the marbled look.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, lettuce, parsley, celery):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, lettuce, parsley, celery. 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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