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Swedish Salad

A salad of pickled herring, apples, potatoes, roast beef, beetroot, and herbs, dressed with oil and vinegar.

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

Swedish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

  1. Remove the heads and tails from the pickled herrings and discard the bones.

Make the salad

  1. Dice the herring flesh and combine it in a bowl with the apples, boiled potatoes, cold roast beef, and beetroot.

  2. Add the sliced gherkins, capers, tarragon, chervil, and minced hard-boiled egg.

  3. Season the mixture with pepper, coarse sea salt, oil, and vinegar to taste.

Serve

  1. Transfer the salad to a serving bowl and serve.

  2. If desired, top with freshly opened oysters and other additions like shrimp, anchovies, Brussels sprouts, olives, celery, or green onions.

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. Capers + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beetroot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Capers + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Pickled herrings
Provide the main fish flavour and a tangy, salty base for the salad.
Boiled potatoes
Add soft body and bulk, soaking up the dressing and binding the mixture.
Cold roast beef
Adds savoury, meaty substance and firm texture to the salad.
Apples
Add crisp texture and a fresh, mildly sweet contrast to the salty fish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavours and balances the richness of the fish and oil.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds creamy richness and body that softens the salad's sharp, briny notes.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, beef, beetroot, capers, tarragon, chervil, egg):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, beef, beetroot, capers, tarragon, chervil, egg. 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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