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Salad

Bloater-paste Salad Dressing

A salad dressing made with bloater paste, paprika paste, capers, olive oil, vinegar, chives, parsley, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bloater-paste Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine the bloater paste and seasonings in a bowl.

  2. Add Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, and vinegar; mix thoroughly.

  3. Stir in capers, chives, and parsley.

Serve

  1. Pour over crisp lettuce leaves.

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. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chive + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

English bloater
Provides the main savoury, smoky fish flavour that defines the dressing.
Olive oil
Adds fat and body, carrying flavour and giving the dressing a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich bloater and balances the oil.
Capers
Add briny, sharp bursts of flavour that cut through the richness.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (capers, olive, chive, vinegar, sauce, pepper, mustard):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Dillfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against capers, olive, chive, vinegar, sauce, pepper, mustard. 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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