Name: German Salad
Ingredients: 1 pint sauerkraut; 1 pint red cabbage, shredded; 1 onion, finely chopped; 1 tablespoon chopped chervil; 1 tablespoon grated horseradish; French dressing; Endive for serving

Why it works: Chervil and endive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

German Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauerkraut

Boil the sauerkraut in water for 5 minutes.
Drain and wash the sauerkraut in cold water.

Mix and serve

Mix the shredded red cabbage with the sauerkraut.
Add the chopped onion, chervil, and horseradish to the mixture.
Arrange endive in a salad bowl and place the mixture in the center.
Cover with French dressing and serve.

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.

Chervil + endivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together75 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chervil + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together20 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together481 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Horseradish + endivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cabbage + cherviltop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together113 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

Sauerkraut: Forms the base of the salad and provides its tangy, sour flavor.
Red cabbage: Adds crunch, color, and a fresh texture to the salad.
Onion: Adds sharp, aromatic flavor to the mixture.
Horseradish: Adds pungent heat that sharpens the overall flavor.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, chervil, horseradish, endive):

Beetrootfits better
Lettucefits better
Chivefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, chervil, horseradish, endive. 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.