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Salad

Salade Russe {Russian Salad}

A low‑fat Russian salad made with mayonnaise, boiled vegetables, tomatoes, gherkins, truffles, and garnished with smoked salmon, egg whites, beetroot, and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 286 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salade Russe {Russian Salad}

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cook the vegetables separately in slightly salted water with a little fresh butter.

  2. Cut the carrot and turnip into dice or stars.

  3. Divide the cauliflower into sprigs.

  4. When the potatoes are cold, cut them into neat short strips.

  5. Peel and slice the tomatoes.

  6. Drain the cooked vegetables well and layer them in a salad bowl.

Assemble and dress

  1. Season with pepper, salt, and a pinch of castor sugar.

  2. Arrange the ingredients, including gherkins and truffles, in distinct sections or layers.

  3. Cover each layer with mayonnaise sauce.

  4. Shape the salad into a pyramid.

  5. Smooth the surface with mayonnaise.

  6. Decorate with small groups of shredded smoked salmon, diced hard-boiled egg whites, chopped beetroot, and olives.

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. Cauliflower + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  4. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Turnip + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise
Binds the layers and adds richness and moisture to the salad.
Potatoes
Add body and starch, holding their shape in neat strips within the layers.
Cauliflower
Provides firm, crisp texture and bulk to the layered salad.
Green peas
Add soft texture and mild sweetness among the other vegetables.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and a touch of acidity to balance the mayonnaise.
Gherkins
Add sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Drain the cooked vegetables well. Excess water thins the mayonnaise and makes the layers slide and weep, so the pyramid loses its shape and the dressing separates.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, cauliflower, potato, truffle, carrot, turnip, beans):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, cauliflower, potato, truffle, carrot, turnip, beans. 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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