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Salad

Vegetable Salad, Parisian Style

A salad of sliced beet, celeriac, potatoes, pickles, and eggs dressed with anchovy paste, mustard, oil, vinegar, tarragon, and rampion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad, Parisian Style

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs through a fine sieve into a bowl.

  2. Add the anchovy paste and French mustard, then mix well with a wooden spoon.

  3. Slowly dilute the mixture with oil and vinegar.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, combine the sliced beet, celeriac, potatoes, and pickles.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and pepper, then add the dressing along with tarragon and rampion.

  3. Mix everything together and transfer to a salad bowl.

  4. Garnish with small pieces of the hard-boiled egg whites and yolks, capers, and stuffed olives.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mustard + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 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

Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks are pressed into the dressing, giving it body and a rich, creamy texture.
Anchovy paste
Adds a deep, salty savoury note that rounds out the dressing.
French mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar into the dressing.
Oil
Provides fat that carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, glossy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the rich yolks and oil.
Potatoes
Provide starchy body so the salad holds substance alongside the vegetables.

The step that matters

Slowly dilute the mixture with oil and vinegar. Adding oil gradually to the yolk and mustard mixture lets it emulsify into a smooth, stable dressing; adding it all at once can cause it to split and turn greasy.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, anchovy, mustard, vinegar, pepper, tarragon, capers):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, anchovy, mustard, vinegar, pepper, tarragon, capers. 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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