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Salad

Cold Meat Salad

A salad made with sliced cold meat, onion, parsley, oil, vinegar, mustard, pepper, salt, and garnished with pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cold Meat Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold meat into very thin slices.

  2. Chop the onion and parsley.

Dress and rest

  1. In a salad bowl, mix the meat, onion, parsley, oil, vinegar, mustard, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cover and let stand for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with parsley and pickles.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Cold meat
Forms the body of the salad, and thin slices let it absorb the dressing.
Oil
Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavor through the meat and onion.
Mild vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and softens the onion's sharpness.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the oil and vinegar.
Onion
Adds sharpness and aroma that mellow as the salad stands.

The step that matters

Cover and let stand for 2 hours. Resting lets the acid and oil soak into the thin meat slices and softens the raw onion, so flavors blend. Skipping the rest leaves the dressing sitting on the surface and the salad tasting harsh.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, vinegar, mustard, pepper, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, vinegar, mustard, pepper, parsley. 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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