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Beef Salad

A salad of thinly sliced beef dressed with vinegar, sweet oil, mustard, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Beef Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beef into very thin small slices.

  2. Place the sliced beef on a dish with chopped parsley.

Dress the beef

  1. In a bowl, mix vinegar, sweet oil, pepper, salt, and mustard, then beat the mixture together.

  2. Pour the mixture over the meat.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Beef
Forms the body of the salad and soaks up the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the dressing.
Sweet oil
Carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Mustard
Helps the oil and vinegar hold together as an emulsion.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture together. Oil and vinegar naturally separate. Beating breaks the oil into tiny droplets suspended in the vinegar, so the dressing coats the meat evenly instead of pooling on top.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, 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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