Skip to main content
Main

Salmagundy

Salmagundy is a Hungarian cold dish of chopped meats, vegetables, and anchovies arranged in a decorative pattern.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beetroot and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 377 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salmagundy

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the white part of cold chicken or veal, hard-boiled egg yolks and whites, parsley, anchovies, beetroot, red pickled cabbage, ham, and grated tongue separately.

  2. If desired, add a small amount of chopped onion.

Arrange and garnish

  1. In a small dish, place a saucer or large tea-cup as a base.

  2. Arrange the chopped ingredients in rows around the base, starting wide at the bottom and narrowing towards the top, varying the colors.

  3. Garnish the top with a sprig of curled parsley or use halved egg whites to hold each ingredient upright.

  4. Add curled butter and parsley as additional garnish between the rows.

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. Beetroot + cabbagetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  4. Beetroot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,261 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken or veal
Provides the main savoury body of the salad as a cooked meat.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the mixed arrangement.
Hard-boiled egg whites
Give firm structure, and their halves can hold other ingredients upright.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that balances the sweeter ingredients.
Beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and the deep red colour that gives contrast.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour and meaty texture.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, egg, parsley, beetroot, cabbage, ham, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, parsley, beetroot, cabbage, ham, butter. 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

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes