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Salad

German Salad

A cold salad of potatoes, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and other vegetables tossed with oil, vinegar, parsley, salt, pepper, and garnished with sour apples and beetroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 146 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

German Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice cold potatoes, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, or any other cold vegetables into small pieces.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, combine the vegetables with oil, vinegar, chopped parsley, pepper, and salt.

  2. Garnish with slices of sour apples and cooked and pickled beetroot.

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. Cauliflower + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cauliflower + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 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 bulk of the salad and absorb the dressing, giving a soft, starchy body.
Oil
Carries flavour and gives the salad a smooth, coating richness.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that defines the dressing and balances the oil.

Swap the brussels sprouts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cauliflower, pepper, vinegar, parsley, apple, beetroot):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cauliflower, pepper, vinegar, parsley, apple, beetroot. 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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