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Flemish Salad

A salad of sliced herring, apples, beetroot, celery, Brussels sprouts, dressed with oil, vinegar, pepper, salt, and chives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 172 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Flemish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

  1. Remove the heads and tails from the herrings and wipe off the skin.

  2. Cut the herrings slantwise from the bone and divide the fillets into two small strips.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a salad bowl, combine the herring strips, shredded apples, beetroot squares, shredded celery, and cold Brussels sprouts.

  2. Season with oil, vinegar, pepper, coarse sea salt, and chopped chives or green onions.

  3. Mix thoroughly and serve.

  4. Optionally, add picked prawns or shrimps when in season.

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. Beetroot + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Beetroot + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together652 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + chivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together359 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Herrings
Provide the main body and rich flavour of the salad.
Sour cooking apples
Add tartness and a crisp, juicy texture that balances the fish.
Cooked beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and a deep colour to the salad.
Brussels sprouts
Contribute a firm, crisp texture and fresh, slightly bitter bite.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and sharpens the other flavours.

Swap the brussels sprouts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, beetroot, celery, vinegar, pepper, chive, shrimp):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, beetroot, celery, vinegar, pepper, chive, shrimp. 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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