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Salad

Cold Meat Salad

A salad of diced cold meat, boiled potatoes, beetroot, eggs, parsley, onion, and a dressing of oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cold Meat Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the potatoes and beetroot.

  2. Cut the meat into dice.

  3. Chop the parsley and onion.

  4. Slice 1 white egg and 1 whole egg, reserving them along with some beetroot.

  5. Toss all the other ingredients together.

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the yolk of 1 egg until smooth, then add salt, pepper, sugar, and dry mustard.

  2. Beat in the vinegar and oil gradually to prevent curdling until thick like custard.

Assemble and serve

  1. Toss the dressing with the salad.

  2. Pile the salad high on a dish and decorate with the reserved sliced beetroot and egg.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + beetroottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together330 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks emulsify with the oil and vinegar to thicken the dressing into a smooth, custard-like texture.
Oil
Forms the body of the emulsified dressing, giving it richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the rich oil and sweetness of the dressing.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad, providing starchy substance that absorbs the dressing.
Cold meat
Provides the main protein and savoury body of the salad.

The step that matters

Beat in the vinegar and oil gradually. Adding oil too fast breaks the emulsion because the egg yolk cannot hold the droplets, so the dressing curdles instead of thickening smoothly. Adding it slowly lets the yolk coat each droplet and stay thick.

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, egg, potato, parsley, onion, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, potato, parsley, onion, vinegar, pepper. 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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