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Beef Salad

A chilled salad of chopped cooked beef and hard boiled eggs with mustard, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beef Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped beef and hard boiled eggs.

  2. Add mustard, coarse sea salt, black pepper, red pepper, and enough vinegar to make the mixture pack nicely. Mix well and set in a cold place until ready to use.

  3. When ready, transfer to another dish.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Beef + mustardtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 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

Cooked beef
Provides the main body and protein of the salad.
Hard boiled eggs
Add creamy richness and bind the chopped beef together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps the mixture hold together.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the eggs and beef.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, pepper, vinegar. 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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