Name: Veal Salad
Ingredients: cold baked or roasted veal; 3 hard-boiled eggs; ½ cup sweet oil; 1 cup vinegar; 1 large cucumber; salt to taste; black pepper to taste; 2 heaping teaspoons English mustard; 2 teaspoons sugar

Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Veal Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the cold veal into very small pieces.
Chop the egg whites and mash the yolks into a pulp.
Mix the yolks with sweet oil, vinegar, and cucumber bits.
Season the veal with salt and black pepper.
Combine mustard and sugar, then add to the egg mixture.

Combine and chill

Mix everything with the veal until well combined.
Refrigerate for 1-2 hours before serving.

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.

Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet oil: Provides fat and smooth richness that carries the flavours of the dressing.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil and eggs.
Hard-boiled eggs: Yolks mashed into a pulp thicken and enrich the dressing, while the chopped whites add body.
English mustard: Adds sharp pungency that cuts through the richness of the oil and eggs.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, vinegar, pepper, mustard, sugar):

Capsicumfits better
Horseradishfits about as well
Shallotfits about as well
Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, vinegar, pepper, mustard, sugar. 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.