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Salad

Flemish Salad

A salad of pickled herring, boiled potatoes, apple, cauliflower, celery, and beetroot, seasoned with pepper, salt, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 146 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Flemish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a salad bowl, combine the chopped pickled herring, diced potatoes, chopped apple, cooked cauliflower, shredded celery, and sliced beetroot.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper, coarse sea salt, oil, and vinegar, then mix carefully to maintain a neat appearance.

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. Cauliflower + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Potato + beetroottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together330 recipes

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

  4. Celery + beetroottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together652 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cauliflower + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pickled herring
Provides the main savoury, salty flavour and the fish base of the salad.
Potatoes
Add bulk and a soft, starchy texture that holds the other ingredients together.
Sour apple
Adds crisp texture and a sharp, acidic note that balances the fish and oil.
Pickled beetroot
Contributes sweet-sour flavour and a vivid colour to the salad.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cauliflower, celery, beetroot, pepper, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cauliflower, celery, beetroot, pepper, vinegar. 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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