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Salad

Frozen Vegetable Salad

A chilled salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, green pepper, Worcestershire sauce, horseradish, onion, dressing, and whipped cream, served in a melon mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Frozen Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and cut the tomatoes into small pieces, then drain in a colander.

  2. Peel the cucumbers thickly, cut them into quarters.

  3. Mix the cucumbers with the tomatoes, then add finely chopped celery and green pepper.

  4. Stir in Worcestershire sauce, horseradish, onion, and sprinkle with salt.

  5. Gently fold in the cooked dressing.

Mold and freeze

  1. Prepare a melon mold and layer the salad with whipped cream until full.

  2. Pack the mold in ice and salt for 3 to 3.5 hours.

Serve

  1. To serve, turn out onto a platter lined with lettuce leaves and garnish with pepper rings.

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. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Celery + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and moisture of the salad, which is drained first to limit excess liquid.
Cucumbers
Add crisp texture and fresh, cooling bulk to the salad.
Cooked dressing
Binds the vegetables together and adds richness and tang throughout the salad.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and a light, creamy texture that softens the frozen salad.
Celery
Contributes crunch and a mild, savory aroma to the vegetable mix.

The step that matters

Draining the tomatoes. Tomatoes release a lot of liquid when cut. If they are not drained well, the salad turns watery and the layers may not hold their shape when frozen and turned out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, sauce, celery, cucumber, horseradish, pepper, cream):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sauce, celery, cucumber, horseradish, pepper, cream. 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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