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Bean Salad, with Aspic Jelly, German Style

A salad of boiled white beans dressed with pepper, salt, oil, vinegar, parsley or chives, and mayonnaise flavored with aspic jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bean Salad, with Aspic Jelly, German Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the beans until tender, then let them cool in their broth.

  2. Select the best beans for decoration, splitting half of them in halves.

  3. Drain the remaining beans in a colander and place them in a bowl.

Dress and set

  1. Season the beans with pepper, salt, oil, vinegar, and chopped parsley or chives.

  2. Add mayonnaise dressing made with aspic jelly and mix well.

  3. Fill the center of a Charlotte mold with the mixture and smooth the top.

  4. Set aside to firm up.

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

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

  2. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 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. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 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

Dry white beans
Form the bulk of the salad and give it a firm, substantial texture.
Oil
Adds richness and carries flavour through the beans.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the fat.
Aspic jelly
Sets the mayonnaise dressing so the salad holds its shape when unmoulded.

The step that matters

Fill the mold and let it set. The dressing must be spooned in evenly and given time to firm up. Aspic sets as it cools, so the mixture needs to be cool and fully settled before it is turned out, or the salad will slump or break.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, parsley. 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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