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Salad, Hungarian

A Hungarian salad of cooked vegetables topped with a thickened egg yolk vinaigrette and garnished with hard‑boiled eggs and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salad, Hungarian

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Place any cooked vegetables in a dish, using a variety for better flavor.

  2. Season the vegetables lightly with salt and pepper, then drizzle with oil and vinegar.

Make the sauce

  1. In an enamelled saucepan, combine egg yolks, vinegar, meat stock or water, salt, and pepper.

  2. Set the saucepan in another pan of simmering water and stir until the sauce thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and place the pan in cold water, continuing to stir until the sauce cools.

  4. Add the oil drop by drop while stirring.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the vegetables and garnish with chopped hard-boiled eggs and green herbs.

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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

  3. Egg + meattop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + meattop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,428 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  5. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and thicken the sauce as they gently cook.
Oil
Adds richness and body by emulsifying into the egg yolk base.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Cooked vegetables
Form the base of the salad that the sauce coats.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce over simmering water. Egg yolks set at moderate heat and can scramble if overheated. Gentle, steady stirring over simmering water thickens the sauce smoothly, and cooling it before adding oil helps the emulsion hold.

“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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