Skip to main content
Main

Salted-Herring Salad

A salad of salted herrings, potatoes, apple, veal, pickled beetroot, cucumber, gherkins, chives, capers, vinegar, oil, mayonnaise, and garnishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salted-Herring Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Cut off the heads and split the backs of the salted herrings, remove the bones and fillets, and cut them into small pieces.

  2. In a deep dish, combine the diced potatoes, raw apple, and cold roasted veal.

  3. Mix in the fish, pickled beetroot, salted cucumber, and gherkins.

  4. Sprinkle with salt, mustard, chopped chives, and capers, then pour in vinegar and oil.

Shape and decorate

  1. Thicken the salad with mayonnaise, shape it into a dome, and smooth the surface.

  2. Mask the salad with more mayonnaise and decorate with gherkins, capers, anchovy fillets, and cherries in vinegar.

  3. Place lettuce hearts in the center and surround the base with croutons of aspic jelly before serving.

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. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beetroot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chive + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beetroot + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cucumber + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together244 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Salted herrings
Provide the main savoury fish flavour and the salty, firm body of the salad.
Mayonnaise
Binds the chopped ingredients together and gives the salad its creamy, moist texture.
Potatoes
Add bulk and a soft, starchy body that absorbs dressing and holds the salad together.
Pickled beetroot
Adds moisture, colour and a sharp, sweet-sour flavour that cuts through the rich mayonnaise.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavours and balances the richness of the fish and mayonnaise.
Cold roasted veal
Contributes meaty savour and a firm, chewy texture to the salad.

The step that matters

Shaping the dome and masking with mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is an emulsion that can split or thin if overworked or warm, so the salad should be cold and the sauce handled gently to keep a smooth, stable coating.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, veal, beetroot, cucumber, mustard, chive, capers):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, veal, beetroot, cucumber, mustard, chive, capers. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes