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Salad

Tongue Salad

A salad of chopped tongue, cabbage, parsley, and egg dressed with a vinaigrette of vinegar, egg, butter, olive oil, mustard, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tongue Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped tongue, cabbage, parsley, and hard-boiled egg.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, bring the vinegar to a boil.

  2. Thicken the boiling vinegar with the beaten egg until it reaches a cream-like consistency.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the butter until melted.

  4. Once nearly cool, mix in the olive oil, mustard, sweet cream, and salt.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the salad mixture and mix well.

  2. Line a salad dish with lettuce leaves and transfer the salad into it.

  3. Garnish with the two hard-boiled eggs by chopping the whites and grating the yolks, sprinkling them alternately on top.

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 + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  2. Chestnut + mustardtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + chestnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Parsley + chestnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 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

Tongue
Provides the main meaty body and substance of the salad.
Egg
Thickens the hot vinegar into a creamy, cohesive dressing.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the rich dressing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, smoothing the dressing's texture.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and softness to the dressing.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and bulk to the salad.

The step that matters

Thickening the vinegar with the beaten egg. Egg proteins set when heated, so the egg must be added to the hot vinegar gradually while stirring. Adding it too fast or letting it boil hard can scramble the egg into lumps instead of a smooth, cream-like dressing.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, egg, vinegar, butter, chestnut, olive, mustard):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, egg, vinegar, butter, chestnut, olive, 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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