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Salad

Winter Salad

A salad of sliced Spanish onions, boiled beetroot, dressed with cream, vinegar, mustard, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Winter Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the Spanish onions until well cooked, then cut them into slices.

  2. Arrange the sliced onions neatly in a salad bowl.

Dress and serve

  1. Just before serving, pour a dressing made of cream, vinegar, mustard, and salt over the onions.

  2. Add the boiled beetroot, sliced.

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. Mustard + beetroottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + beetroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,261 recipes

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish onions
Form the salad's main body and provide a sharp, savoury flavour once cooked.
Good cream
Adds richness and fat to the dressing, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the cream.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour and helps the cream and vinegar hold together.
Beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and colour to the salad.

The step that matters

Dressing just before serving. Vinegar and salt draw liquid out of the onions and beetroot over time, so the salad turns watery and limp if dressed too early. Pouring the dressing on just before serving keeps the vegetables crisp.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, vinegar, mustard, beetroot):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, vinegar, mustard, 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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