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Swedish Salad

A salad of sardines, cold sliced cooked meat, beet, potato, parsley, dressed with oil, vinegar, and seasonings, garnished with hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Swedish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove bones and skin from the sardines and cut each into 4 pieces.

  2. In a bowl, combine sardines, cold sliced cooked meat, onion juice, sliced beet, cut potato, and chopped parsley.

Assemble and dress

  1. Line a serving bowl with lettuce and add the mixture.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper, then pour over the salad.

  3. Garnish with sliced hard-boiled eggs.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  5. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Oil
Carries the vinegar and seasoning and coats the salad with richness and moisture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the oil and cooked ingredients.
Sardines
Provide the main savoury, oily fish flavour and a firm, flaky texture.
Cooked potato
Adds bulk and a soft, starchy texture that absorbs some of the dressing.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, parsley, vinegar, tarragon, pepper, egg. 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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