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Salad

Corned Beef Salad

A layered salad of lettuce, potatoes, corned beef, beetroot, and hard‑boiled eggs dressed with oil, vinegar, tarragon vinegar, pepper, salt, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Corned Beef Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix salad oil, vinegar, tarragon vinegar, pepper, coarse sea salt, and dissolved mustard to make the dressing.

Layer and serve

  1. In a salad bowl, layer sliced cooked potatoes at the bottom.

  2. Add a layer of thinly sliced corned beef on top of the potatoes.

  3. Cover the meat with dressed lettuce and scatter coarsely chopped beetroot over it.

  4. Repeat with a second layer of potatoes, beef, and lettuce.

  5. Garnish with additional beetroot and sliced hard-boiled eggs.

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. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tarragon + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the crisp, fresh body of the salad and holds the dressing.
Corned beef
Supplies the savoury, meaty layer that gives the salad its main protein.
Potatoes
Add starchy bulk that soaks up dressing and makes the salad more filling.
Salad oil
Carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, coating richness.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft, creamy texture and richness to the layers.
Beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and a vivid colour to the salad.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, vinegar, tarragon, pepper, mustard, beef, beetroot):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, vinegar, tarragon, pepper, mustard, beef, beetroot. 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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