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Salad

Italian Salad

A salad of herrings, boiled potatoes, onions, apples, eggs, veal or fowl, anchovies, capers, pickles, olives, olive oil, pepper, vinegar, parsley, and red beets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Italian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

  1. Soak the herrings in water for 1 hour, then skin and bone them.

Make the salad

  1. Cut the boiled potatoes, onions, apples, hard-boiled eggs, and cold veal or fowl into small pieces.

  2. Chop the salt anchovies finely and mix them with the other ingredients.

  3. Add the capers, pickles, olives, olive oil, pepper, and vinegar to the mixture.

Serve

  1. Place the salad on a dish and garnish with olives, egg yolks and whites, parsley, capers, and red beets.

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 + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Herrings
Form the main body of the salad as the fish component.
Boiled potatoes
Add starchy bulk that soaks up the dressing and gives the salad body.
Apples
Contribute crisp texture and mild sweetness to balance the sharp elements.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the mixture.
Salt anchovies
Add concentrated salty, savory flavour that seasons the whole salad.
Olive oil
Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavour through the salad.

The step that matters

Soaking the herrings. Soaking for the full hour draws out excess salt from the cured fish, so the salad is not overly salty. Skinning and boning afterward removes the fragile bones and skin that would spoil the texture.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, egg, veal, capers, olive, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, egg, veal, capers, olive, 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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