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Russian Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Russian Salad

Why it works: Parsnip and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 144 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Russian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the carrots, turnips, parsnips, and beetroot into strips using a scoop.

  2. Add any other desired vegetables like asparagus, peas, French beans, gherkins, capers, or scraped horseradish.

  3. Layer the vegetables in a salad dish, seasoning each layer with mayonnaise or Tartar sauce.

  4. Gradually decrease the size of the layers until the salad forms a point.

  5. Decorate with a border of aspic jelly, picked prawns, olives, or gherkins.

  6. Garnish the surface with small balls of caviar.

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. Parsnip + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

Swap the asparagus

The recipe marks asparagus as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, parsnip, beetroot, peas, beans, capers):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, parsnip, beetroot, peas, beans, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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