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Salad

Vegetable Salad, Russian Style

A cold salad of boiled potatoes, celery, gherkins, apple, anchovies, and a dressing of oil, vinegar, horseradish, mustard, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad, Russian Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cook the celery or celeriac and potatoes until tender, then cool them.

  2. Trim and slice the cooled vegetables finely.

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, combine the sliced vegetables with gherkins, apple, capers, and anchovies.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, oil, and vinegar.

  3. Add grated horseradish and mustard, then mix gently.

  4. Set aside for 30 minutes, then drain off excess moisture.

Serve

  1. Serve in a salad bowl with mayonnaise dressing.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the bulk of the salad and a soft, tender texture once cooked and cooled.
Celery or celeriac
Adds crisp body and a fresh, mildly savoury flavour to the salad.
Capers
Contribute a sharp, briny bite that cuts through the richness of the dressing.
Anchovies
Add a deep, salty savouriness that rounds out the flavour of the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavours and balances the oil and mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Draining after resting. Cut vegetables release water as they sit with salt and acid. Draining off the excess keeps the salad from becoming watery and diluting the dressing.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, potato, capers, pepper, vinegar, horseradish, mustard):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, potato, capers, pepper, vinegar, horseradish, mustard. 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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