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Russian Salad

A salad of diced turnip, carrot, celery, peas, lettuce, dressed with French dressing and mayonnaise, garnished with pickled beets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Russian Salad

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Russian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and dice the turnip, carrot, and celery finely.

  2. Stew the diced vegetables until tender, then drain and let cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add the sifted peas and mix well with French dressing.

  2. Shred the lettuce and line a salad bowl with it.

  3. Heap the salad mixture on top and add a spoonful of mayonnaise.

  4. Garnish with pickled beets 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnip
Provides a firm, tender bite once stewed and diced.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and colour, and softens during stewing.
Peas
Add a mild sweetness and soft texture to the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and richness, moistening the salad mixture.
Lettuce
Forms a crisp base that holds the salad mixture.

The step that matters

Stew the diced vegetables until tender. Undercooked vegetables stay hard and crunchy in the salad, while overcooked ones turn mushy and break down. Draining and cooling them fully before dressing keeps the salad from becoming watery and prevents the dressing and mayonnaise from thinning out.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, celery, lettuce):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, celery, lettuce. 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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