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Salad

Herring Salad

A salad of herring, apples, walnuts, potatoes, beets, sugar, vinegar, water, garnished with eggs and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,087 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Herring Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

  1. Soak the herring overnight.

  2. Clean the herring and remove all bones.

  3. Chop the herring in a bowl.

Make the salad

  1. Add the apples, walnut meats, boiled potatoes, and enough boiled beets to achieve a red color.

  2. Chop all ingredients very fine.

  3. Mix in the sugar and enough vinegar and water to moisten the mixture.

  4. Garnish with hard-boiled eggs and olives.

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. Walnut + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Walnut + potatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Apple + olivetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,565 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Herring
Forms the main body of the salad and supplies its savory, fishy flavor.
Apples
Add sweetness, moisture and a crisp texture that contrasts with the fish.
Walnut meats
Add crunch and a rich, nutty fat to the chopped mixture.
Boiled potatoes
Add starchy bulk that binds the chopped ingredients and softens the texture.
Boiled beets
Provide the red color and a mild earthy sweetness.

The step that matters

Chop all ingredients very fine. Fine, even chopping lets the pieces bind together into a cohesive salad rather than separate chunks, and spreads the beet color evenly through the mixture.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, meat, potato, sugar, vinegar, egg, olive):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, meat, potato, sugar, vinegar, egg, 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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