Skip to main content
Main

French Salad

A salad of mashed hard‑boiled eggs mixed with raw egg, oil, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

French Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with a wooden spoon.

  2. Moisten the yolks with the raw egg.

  3. Add the salt, black pepper, and cayenne to the egg mixture.

  4. Gradually mix in the oil and vinegar until you have a smooth sauce.

  5. Stir in the shredded onion, chervil, and tarragon if using plain vinegar.

  6. For a richer sauce, add thick cream or melted butter.

Finish

  1. Chop the egg whites and add them to the salad if desired.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Olive + tarragontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + cherviltop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Their crumbled richness forms the base of the salad and thickens the sauce body.
Raw egg
Emulsifies the oil and vinegar, helping the mashed yolks bind into a smooth sauce.
Oil
Supplies fat that, emulsified with the egg, gives the sauce its smooth, creamy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk and oil mixture.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the oil and vinegar. Adding oil slowly lets the raw egg emulsify it into the yolks. Pouring too fast can split the mixture into a greasy, separated sauce instead of a smooth one.

Swap the tarragon

The recipe marks tarragon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, olive, onion, chervil, cream):

  1. Tarragonthe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, olive, onion, chervil, cream. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes