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Salad

Boiled Salad

A salad of boiled vegetables dressed with oil, mustard, vinegar, and topped with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Boiled Salad

Why it works: Cauliflower and broccoli match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 127 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil or bake onions, beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, and French beans until tender.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix oil or melted butter, water or cream, salt, mustard, and vinegar until well combined.

  2. Add the boiled vegetables to the dressing and toss to coat.

  3. Chop the egg whites and sprinkle on top of the salad.

  4. Garnish with raw endive, lettuce, chervil, or burnet.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cauliflower + broccolitop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together127 recipes

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

  2. Beetroot + broccolitop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together138 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beetroot + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beetroot + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together215 recipes

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

  5. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Provide sweetness and savory flavor as the base vegetables of the salad.
Beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and a deep color to the salad.
Oil or melted butter
Carries fat-soluble flavor and coats the vegetables for a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sweetness of the vegetables.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar dressing.
Hard-boiled egg whites
Add mild, soft texture and a little bulk on top of the salad.

The step that matters

Toss the boiled vegetables in the dressing while they are still warm. Warm vegetables absorb dressing more readily than cold ones, so flavor penetrates evenly. Mixing oil, water or cream, mustard, and vinegar well first helps the dressing stay combined rather than separating on the vegetables.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, beans, butter, cream):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, beans, butter, cream. 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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