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Salad

Navarro Salad

A mayonnaise-based salad with carrots, peas, potatoes, eggs, cabbage, horseradish, and peppers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 481 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Navarro Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Clean the carrot thoroughly. Cut the carrot into thin slices, then into strips like straws.

  2. Place the carrot in a saucepan, cover with boiling water, and add half the sugar. Cook until tender.

  3. Cook the green peas in the same way. Just before removing from heat, add salt and boil for 1 minute.

  4. Drain the vegetables and set aside to cool.

  5. Cut the potatoes into cubes and slice the hard-boiled eggs.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a salad dish, combine the carrot, peas, potatoes, eggs, cabbage, horseradish, and peppers.

  2. Mix well with half of the mayonnaise. Smooth the salad.

  3. Pour over the remaining dressing.

  4. Garnish with shredded cabbage and finely chopped peppers.

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. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Potato + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 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

Mayonnaise
Provides fat and moisture, binding the salad and coating the vegetables in a creamy dressing.
Potatoes
Supply starchy body, giving the salad substance and soaking up some of the dressing.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add protein-rich softness and a mild, creamy richness to the mixed salad.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a tender texture that contrasts with the firmer vegetables.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness, colour and a firm-tender crunch to the salad.

The step that matters

Cooking the carrot and peas until just tender. Overcooking softens vegetables into mush and leaches sugar and flavour into the water. Stopping when just tender keeps their texture and shape intact in the finished salad.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, potato, egg, cabbage, horseradish, pepper, sugar):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, egg, cabbage, horseradish, pepper, sugar. 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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