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Bologna Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 231 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bologna Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the potatoes in their skins, then peel and slice them while warm.

  2. Rub the inside of a salad bowl with a piece of garlic.

  3. Cut the sardines into small pieces and shred the beetroot, pickles, and celery.

  4. Mix the potatoes with the sardines, beetroot, pickles, and celery.

  5. Season with oil, vinegar, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

  6. Mix well, then dish up and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  7. Garnish with fillets of anchovies, capers, and olives, and serve.

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. Beetroot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Potato + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, beetroot, celery, vinegar, pepper, parsley, capers):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, beetroot, celery, vinegar, pepper, parsley, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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