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Salad

Royal Salad

A raw vegetable salad featuring beets, carrots, onions, turnips, cabbage, lemon, oil, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Royal Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Grate or finely chop the beets, carrots, onions, and turnips.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the grated vegetables with the shredded cabbage.

Season and dress

  1. Season with salt and sprinkle with celery seeds.

  2. Add lemon juice and oil, then mix thoroughly.

Add the egg whites and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Fold in the lemon juice, then serve over the salad.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Beets
Adds sweetness, earthy flavor and a deep color to the salad.
Carrots
Adds sweetness and crisp, crunchy texture.
Cabbage
Provides the bulk and crisp, fresh texture of the salad.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they add lightness and airy texture.
Oil
Adds fat and moisture, coating the vegetables and softening their bite.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be whipped until they hold firm peaks, since trapped air gives the foam its lift. Overbeating makes them dry and grainy, and folding too roughly knocks out the air.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Orangefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, turnip, cabbage, celery, egg. 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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