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Salad

Onion Salad

A salad of boiled Spanish onion and potatoes with parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Onion Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the onion and potatoes when they are quite cold.

Combine and dress

  1. Mix the sliced onion and potatoes with parsley, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Add the lemon juice and olive oil, and mix well once more.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

Spanish onion
Provides the sharp, aromatic bite that defines the salad.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and soak up the dressing.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness that carries flavour through the salad.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Slice when cold. Boiled onion and potato are firm and hold their shape when cold, so slices stay intact instead of breaking or turning mushy when mixed with the dressing.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, parsley, pepper, lemon, olive. 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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