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Salad

Meat Salad

A salad of veal, pork, pickles, eggs, lettuce, olives, celery, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Meat Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the veal and pork until tender, then let cool.

  2. Chop the cooled meat with pickles, hard-boiled eggs, lettuce, olives, salt, pepper, and celery.

  3. Serve the mixture on individual lettuce leaves topped with mayonnaise dressing.

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 + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Olive + celerytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of veal
Provides the main body of meat, which becomes tender through cooking.
Lean pork
Adds more meat to the salad, giving it a firmer, savoury bulk.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft, creamy texture and body to the chopped mixture.
Pickles
Add acidity and a sharp contrast to the rich meat.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, binding the salad and softening its flavour.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, egg, lettuce, olive, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, egg, lettuce, olive, pepper. 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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