Name: Game Salad a LA Polonaise
Ingredients: cold roasted game, skin removed; 2 tablespoons finely minced chives; 1 teaspoon mixed mustard; salt to taste; pepper to taste; equal parts vinegar and oil; 3 hard-boiled eggs; endive or white leaves of lettuce for garnish

Why it works: Chive and endive share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 61 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Game Salad a LA Polonaise

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the cold roasted game into small squares.
In a salad bowl, combine the game, chives, mustard, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil.
Boil the eggs for 3 minutes, peel, and add the yolks to the mixture, stirring well. Finely chop the egg whites and sprinkle them on top.
Garnish with endive or lettuce leaves and serve immediately.

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.

Chive + endivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together61 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Mustard + endivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together121 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Chive + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together587 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roasted game: Provides the main protein and meaty texture of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs: Yolks blend into the dressing for richness, while chopped whites add texture on top.
Vinegar and oil: Form the dressing, adding acidity and fat that carry flavor through the salad.
Chives: Add a mild onion-like aroma and fresh flavor.
Mixed mustard: Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the vinegar and oil dressing.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the mixture. Yolks must be stirred thoroughly so they blend evenly into the dressing; unmixed pieces leave pockets of rich yolk and uneven seasoning throughout the salad.

Swap the endive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chive, mustard, pepper, vinegar, egg):

Shallotfits better
Horseradishfits better
Lettucefits about as well
Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chive, mustard, pepper, vinegar, egg. 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.

Chicken Salad623 recipes

Salad Dressing491 recipes

Tomato Salad179 recipes

Cold Slaw160 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Game Salad a LA Polonaise