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Salad

Navarro Salad

A salad of sliced carrot, peas, potatoes, eggs, cabbage, bell pepper, horseradish, and mayonnaise.

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 and cut it into thin slices, then into strips like straws.

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

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

  4. Drain the vegetables and set aside to cool.

  5. Cut the potatoes into cubes. Slice the hard-boiled eggs.

Assemble and dress the salad

  1. In a salad dish, combine the carrots, peas, potatoes, eggs, cabbage, horseradish, and chopped bell pepper.

  2. Mix well with half of the mayonnaise and smooth the salad. Pour the remaining dressing on top.

  3. 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 creamy moisture that binds the salad and coats the vegetables.
Eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture when sliced into the salad.
Potatoes
Provide starchy bulk and a soft, tender texture in the salad.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.
Sugar
Adds gentle sweetness to the carrots as they cook in the sweetened water.

The step that matters

Draining and cooling the vegetables before dressing. Vegetables that are still warm or wet release water and heat into the mayonnaise, thinning the dressing and making the salad soggy and greasy.

Swap the peas

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

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

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