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Salad

Russian Salad

A salad of boiled vegetables mixed with mayonnaise and garnished with cress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Russian Salad

Why it works: Beetroot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 336 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Russian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut beetroot into shapes.

  2. Chop celery, turnip, carrot, and potato, then cook and cut into dice.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl.

  2. Pour mayonnaise over the mixture and mix well.

  3. Garnish with bunches of cress.

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. Beetroot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Beetroot + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together699 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

What each ingredient does

Beetroot
Adds bright colour and a sweet, earthy flavour to the salad.
Potato
Provides bulk and a soft, starchy texture that holds the dressing.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess that coats the vegetables and keeps them moist.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, slightly bitter note.

The step that matters

Cook the diced vegetables until just tender. Starch in potato, turnip and carrot softens as it cooks. Overcooking breaks down cell walls so the pieces turn mushy and lose their shape in the salad. Cooking only until a knife slides in keeps the dice intact.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, celery, turnip, carrot):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, celery, turnip, carrot. 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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