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Salad

Russian Salad

A cold salad of boiled potatoes, carrots, turnips, artichokes, cauliflower, Spanish onions, capers, olives, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Russian Salad

Why it works: Artichoke and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Russian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Parboil the potatoes, carrots, turnips, artichokes, cauliflower, and Spanish onions until tender.

  2. Drain and dry the vegetables.

Finish the vegetables

  1. Warm the vegetables in butter.

  2. Drain again and let them cool.

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. Artichoke + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Artichoke + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Hold their shape when parboiled and add starchy body to the salad.
Butter
Adds richness and a gentle buttery flavour when the vegetables are warmed in it.
Capers
Add sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich vegetables.
Olives
Add salty, briny flavour and a savoury note to the salad.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the vegetables before warming them in butter. Surface water left on the parboiled vegetables would dilute the butter and steam rather than lightly coat them, so draining and drying helps them warm evenly and keeps the salad from becoming soggy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, carrot, turnip, artichoke, cauliflower, capers, olive):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Endivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, carrot, turnip, artichoke, cauliflower, capers, olive. 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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