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Salad

Salad of Brussels Sprouts

A salad of boiled Brussels sprouts, onion, olives, walnuts, capers, lemon juice, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salad of Brussels Sprouts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil 1 pint of Brussels sprouts until tender, then drain.

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped onion, olives, walnut kernels, and capers.

  2. Add the lemon juice and mix well.

  3. Pour a good mayonnaise dressing over the mixture and serve.

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. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Olive + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Brussels sprouts
Form the bulk of the salad and provide a tender, slightly firm texture after boiling.
Olives
Add a salty, briny flavour that contrasts with the mild sprouts.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny bite that brightens the salad.
Walnut kernels
Add crunch and a nutty richness against the soft sprouts.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavours and balances the rich dressing.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess that binds the mixture and carries the flavours.

The step that matters

Drain the Brussels sprouts well after boiling. Sprouts left wet dilute the mayonnaise dressing and make the salad watery. Cooking until just tender avoids mushy, strongly sulphurous sprouts.

Swap the brussels sprouts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, olive, walnut, capers, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, olive, walnut, capers, lemon. 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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