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Salad

Onion Salad

A salad of sliced young onions and radishes dressed with sour cream, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Radish and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 508 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Onion Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the young onions and radishes.

  2. Sprinkle a handful of coarse sea salt over them and let them wilt for 30 minutes.

  3. Wash off the salt and squeeze out the excess water.

Dress and serve

  1. Beat the sour cream until smooth, then add vinegar to taste.

  2. Pour the dressing over the salad and sprinkle with pepper.

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. Radish + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + radishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetal (cream, earthy).

  3. Radish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together382 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Young onions
Provide the main crisp, sharp bulk of the salad.
Radishes
Add peppery crunch and a firm texture to the salad.
Sour cream
Forms a creamy, rich dressing that coats the vegetables.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the creamy dressing.

The step that matters

Wash off the salt and squeeze out the excess water.. Salt draws water out of the vegetables by osmosis, so they wilt. Rinsing removes the surface salt, and squeezing removes the released water so the dressing stays thick and the salad does not turn watery.

Swap the radish

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cream, vinegar, 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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