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Salad

Truffle Salad, with Potatoes, Russian Style

A Russian-style salad of boiled potatoes and sliced truffles dressed with olive oil, vinegar, herbs, mayonnaise, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Truffle Salad, with Potatoes, Russian Style

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the boiled new potatoes and place them in a salad bowl with the sliced truffles.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar, then cover the bowl.

  3. After 20 minutes, add the finely chopped parsley, tarragon, and chives, and mix well.

  4. Arrange the salad and top it with a mayonnaise dressing mixed with a little mustard.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tarragon + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Potato + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together611 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 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

New potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and absorb the seasoning and dressing.
Truffles
Add a deep, earthy aroma that defines the dish.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess, coating the potatoes with richness and moisture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the fat of the dressing.

The step that matters

Covering and resting the seasoned potatoes for 20 minutes. Potatoes absorb seasoning and acid as they stand, so the flavours penetrate the slices. Adding the herbs only after this rest lets the seasoning soak in before they are mixed through.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, pepper, olive, vinegar, parsley, tarragon, chive):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, pepper, olive, vinegar, parsley, tarragon, chive. 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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