Name: Polish Salad, or Salad Piquant
Ingredients: 6 large salt pickles; 2 sour apples; 1 large onion or 2 small onions; ½ teaspoon white pepper; 1 tablespoon sugar (white or brown); a pinch of salt (if necessary); white wine vinegar (enough to cover)

Why it works: Apple and white wine work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Polish Salad, or Salad Piquant

Ingredients

6 large salt pickles
2 sour apples
1 large onion or 2 small onions
½ teaspoon white pepper
1 tablespoon sugar (white or brown)
a pinch of salt (if necessary)
white wine vinegar (enough to cover)

Directions

Prepare

Soak the salt pickles in water for about 6 hours, then drain the water.
Chop the pickles, sour apples, and onions, and mix them thoroughly in a bowl.

Season and serve

Sprinkle the mixture with white pepper, sugar, and a pinch of salt if needed.
Pour enough white wine vinegar over the mixture to just cover it.
Use within a week for best freshness.

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.

Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,776 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,535 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,226 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pickles: Provide the main sour, salty flavour and crunchy texture of the salad.
Sour apples: Add tartness and crisp texture that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Onion: Adds sharp pungency and aroma to the salad.
White wine vinegar: Adds acidity that preserves the mixture and keeps it tangy.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt pickles. Soaking draws out excess salt from the pickles, so the finished salad is not overly salty. Taste before adding the pinch of salt, since the pickles may already be seasoned enough.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, onion, sugar, white wine, vinegar):

Garlicfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Tarragonfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, onion, sugar, white wine, vinegar. 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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Polish Salad, or Salad Piquant