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Russian Salad

A chilled aspic jelly salad with mixed vegetables, gherkins, olives, anchovies, tarragon, and chervil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Russian Salad

Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Russian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Scald a quart border mold.

  2. Rinse the mold with cold water, leaving it wet.

  3. Pack ice around the mold if using the salad the same day.

  4. Set the mold in a cool place if not using the salad the same day.

Layer the salad

  1. Warm the aspic jelly until liquid.

  2. Pour a couple of spoonfuls of the liquid aspic jelly into the mold.

  3. Cut asparagus, turnip, and carrot to equal lengths.

  4. Arrange a layer of vegetables, alternating asparagus, turnip, and carrot.

  5. Pour enough jelly to set the vegetables firm.

  6. Add another row of different colored vegetables leaning in the opposite direction.

  7. Continue layering with white cauliflower sprigs and green peas.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Olive + tarragontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Olive + cherviltop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Aspic jelly
Sets into a clear, firm gel that holds the vegetables in place when unmolded.
Mixed vegetables
Provide color, shape and crisp-tender texture as the visible layers of the salad.

The step that matters

Pour enough jelly to set the vegetables firm. Aspic must be liquid enough to flow between pieces but then given time to set. Pouring too little leaves vegetables loose, while pouring too much floats them. Each layer should be firm before the next is added so the pattern holds when the mold is turned out.

Swap the tarragon

The recipe marks tarragon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, chervil):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, chervil. 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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