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Russian Salad

A chilled salad of aspic jelly and assorted vegetables, garnished with optional 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 mould

  1. Scald a quart border mould and rinse it with cold water, leaving it wet.

  2. If using the salad the same day, pack ice around the mould; if not, it can set without ice in cool weather.

Set the layers

  1. Warm the aspic jelly until liquid and pour a couple of spoonfuls into the mould.

  2. Arrange a layer of vegetables, alternating asparagus, turnip, and carrot, cut in equal lengths, and pour in enough jelly to set them firm.

  3. Add another row of different colored vegetables leaning in the opposite direction, then add white sprigs of cauliflower 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
Gelatin-based setting liquid that holds the vegetables in place and gives the salad its firm, moist body.
Mixed vegetables
Supply colour, crisp-tender texture and visual pattern in each layer of the salad.

The step that matters

Setting each layer with aspic. The jelly must be liquid enough to flow between the vegetables but must set firm before the next row is added. If it is too cold or too thin, pieces shift or float, and the layered pattern collapses when the mould 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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