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Corned-beef Salad

A salad made from cubed corned beef, onions, pickles, oil, mustard, vinegar, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Corned-beef Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the corned beef into small cubes.

  2. Finely chop the onions and pickles.

Combine and season

  1. Add pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  2. Stir in the oil and mustard.

  3. Add the vinegar and mix all the ingredients together.

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

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corned beef
Forms the main body of the salad and supplies its savory, salty flavor.
Onions
Add sharpness and crunch that cut through the richness of the beef.
Pickles
Contribute acidity and tang along with a crisp texture.
Oil
Adds fat and moisture, coating the beef and onions and softening their bite.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the salad and preserves its fresh tang.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, pepper, vinegar. 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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