Skip to main content
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
Jump to recipe ↓
Illustration of Boiled SaladIllustration

Why it works: Cauliflower and endive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 21 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

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.

The picture is an illustration, not a photo of this recipe · 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cauliflower + endivetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together21 recipes

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

  2. Cauliflower + broccolitop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together127 recipes

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

  3. Beetroot + endivetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beetroot + broccolitop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cauliflower + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned 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.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  2. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  3. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  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. 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.

You might also like

Illustration of Chicken SaladIllustrationChicken Salad623 recipesIllustration of Salad DressingIllustrationSalad Dressing491 recipesIllustration of Tomato SaladIllustrationTomato Salad179 recipesIllustration of Cold SlawIllustrationCold Slaw160 recipes