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Swedish Salad

A salad of diced mackerel, roast beef, potatoes, capers, gherkins, onion, parsley, olives, eggs, dressed with French salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Swedish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash, trim, and soak the mackerel in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Cover the mackerel with boiling water and simmer for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the mackerel and cut it into dice.

Assemble the salad

  1. Dice the cold roast beef to make 1 pint.

  2. Dice the boiled potatoes.

  3. In a bowl, mix the mackerel, beef, potatoes, capers, gherkins, onion, parsley, olives, and hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Pour ½ pint of French salad dressing over the mixture and season with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper.

  5. Transfer the salad to a bowl and top with the cold raw oysters.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 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

Mackerel
Provides the main flaky, meaty body of the salad after poaching.
Roast beef
Adds dense, savoury meat texture that holds its shape among the diced ingredients.
Potatoes
Add soft, starchy bulk that absorbs some dressing and binds the mixture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Contribute creamy richness and body to the salad.
French salad dressing
Supplies oil and acid that moisten the salad and carry the seasoning.
Oysters
Add briny, delicate flavour and a cold, soft texture as a topping.

The step that matters

Simmering the mackerel. Simmering gently keeps the fish moist and tender; boiling hard toughens the protein and breaks the flakes apart, so the fish should only just simmer.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, capers, parsley, olive, egg, 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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