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Salad

Salade a LA Russe

A cold salad of blanched vegetables, anchovies, smoked salmon, caviar, aspic jelly, prawns, olives, and herbs, bound with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Salmon and caviar share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 42 recipes mention both. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut young carrots and turnips with a small round or oval vegetable scoop.

  2. Blanch the carrots and turnips, then cook them separately in salted water.

  3. Cut Trench beans into diamond shapes, blanch them, then cook them.

  4. Boil asparagus tips and peas until tender.

  5. Drain and cool all vegetables.

Make the salad

  1. Mix the vegetables with a little oil, vinegar, and mayonnaise sauce.

  2. Season the mixture with cayenne pepper and salt.

  3. Cut anchovies, some smoked salmon, and cooked meat into small dice.

  4. Add a few capers, chopped gherkins, and caviar to the diced anchovies, salmon, and meat.

  5. Add the diced anchovies, salmon, meat, capers, gherkins, and caviar to the vegetable mixture.

  6. Sprinkle the mixture with chopped parsley and savory herbs.

  7. Stir in a little aspic jelly to bind the mixture.

Assemble and set

  1. Prepare a border of aspic, garnished with olives, capers, prawns, and pickles.

  2. Place some of the mixture in the center of the border.

  3. Fill the center with aspic.

  4. Cool the assembled dish.

  5. Make a medium-sized bowl mold with aspic.

  6. Garnish the mold with fancifully-cut slices of smoked salmon, gherkins, olives, caviar, and prawns.

  7. Fill the center of the mold with the mixture.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Salmon + caviartop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Chicken + olivetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  3. Salmon + peastop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together375 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Peas + olivetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-hex-3-en-1-ol (freshly cut grass green and herbaceous notes).

  5. Olive + vinegartop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,843 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

Mayonnaise sauce
Coats the vegetables and adds richness and a creamy texture to the salad.
Aspic jelly
Sets the mixture and holds the pieces together in a firm, sliceable form.
Smoked salmon
Adds savory, smoky flavor and a tender texture to the diced mixture.
Anchovies
Contribute a salty, savory depth that seasons the whole salad.
Vegetables
Provide bulk, colour and a crisp-tender texture throughout the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Stir in a little aspic jelly to bind the mixture. Aspic is a gelatin-based liquid that sets as it cools. Too much makes the salad rubbery, while too little fails to hold the pieces together when the dish is unmoulded.

Flavor stand-ins for the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, caviar, crayfish, sauce, chicken, olive, vinegar):

  1. Peasthe original
  2. Beansabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Sesameabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, caviar, crayfish, sauce, chicken, olive, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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