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Salad

Winter Salad

A salad of boiled beetroot, leeks, shallots, celery, watercress, horseradish, and a dressing of tarragon vinegar, olive oil, cream, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and horseradish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 66 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Winter Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. In a salad bowl, combine the beetroot, leeks, shallots, celery, and watercress.

  2. Grate the horseradish over the salad.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and moist sugar, mixing well with two forks.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, whisk together the tarragon vinegar, olive oil, cream, and beaten egg yolk.

  2. Pour the dressing over the salad just 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. Watercress + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beetroot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beetroot + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Shallot + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and a vivid colour to the salad.
Olive oil
Provides fat that gives the dressing a smooth, rounded body.
Egg yolk
Acts as an emulsifier, helping the oil and vinegar blend into a creamy dressing.
Tarragon vinegar
Supplies acidity that brightens the dressing and balances its richness.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness of the dressing.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing just before serving. Acid in the vinegar and the cut vegetables soften and wilt the leaves over time, so dressing too early makes the salad limp and watery.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, leek, shallot, watercress, horseradish, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, leek, shallot, watercress, horseradish, pepper, sugar. 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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