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Salad

Corned Beef Salad

A layered salad of lettuce, potatoes, corned beef, beetroot, and hard‑boiled eggs dressed with oil, vinegar, tarragon vinegar, mustard, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Corned Beef Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix salad oil, vinegar, tarragon vinegar, pepper, coarse sea salt, and dissolved mustard to make the dressing.

Layer and serve

  1. In a salad bowl, layer sliced cooked potatoes at the bottom.

  2. Add a layer of thinly sliced corned beef on top of the potatoes.

  3. Cover the meat with dressed lettuce and scatter coarsely chopped beetroot over it.

  4. Repeat with a second layer of potatoes, beef, and lettuce.

  5. Garnish with additional beetroot and 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. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tarragon + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuces
Forms the crisp, fresh bulk of the salad and carries the dressing between layers.
Salad oil
Adds fat that coats the leaves and carries flavour through the dressing.
Dissolved mustard
Emulsifies with the oil and vinegar, helping the dressing hold together and adding sharpness.
Cooked corned beef
Provides the salty, savoury meat layer that anchors the salad.
Cooked potatoes
Forms a starchy, soft base layer that absorbs some of the dressing.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, vinegar, tarragon, pepper, mustard, beef, beetroot):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, vinegar, tarragon, pepper, mustard, beef, beetroot. 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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