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Salad

Soyer’s Grouse and Black Game Salad

A salad of roasted grouse, hard‑boiled eggs, greens, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soyer’s Grouse and Black Game Salad

Salad greens for 2 servings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grouse

  1. Roast the young grouse until cooked but not overdone.

  2. Once cold, cut the grouse into eight pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a basin, combine shallot, parsley, sugar, egg yolks, salt, pepper, chili vinegar, and oil. Mix all ingredients together with a spoon.

  2. Whip the cream and carefully fold it into the mixture to create a salad sauce.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a salad bowl, place enough salad greens for two servings.

  2. Lay the pieces of grouse over the salad with the hard-boiled eggs cut lengthwise.

  3. Pour the sauce over the salad and mix gently.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Grouse
Provides the main cooked meat, which is cut into pieces to serve over the greens.
Egg yolks
Raw yolks emulsify with the oil and vinegar to thicken the dressing into a creamy sauce.
Oil
Forms the fat phase of the emulsified sauce, giving it richness and a smooth texture.
Cream
Whipped and folded in, it adds lightness and a softer, richer texture to the sauce.
Chili vinegar
Adds acidity and sharpness that cuts through the richness of the oil, yolks and cream.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, mild texture and body to the salad alongside the grouse.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped cream. Whipped cream holds air, so it must be folded in gently with a spatula or spoon. Vigorous stirring deflates it and loosens the sauce, leaving it thin rather than light and airy.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, parsley, sugar, pepper, vinegar, cream):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Shallotthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley, sugar, pepper, vinegar, cream. 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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