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Salad

Potato and Beetroot Salad

A salad of sliced potatoes, beetroot, celery, and parsley dressed with egg yolk, mustard, vinegar, sugar, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato and Beetroot Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice potatoes a quarter of an inch thick and trim the edges.

  2. Slice the beetroot and chop a piece of white celery.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, place yolks in a bowl, add sugar and seasoning.

  2. Gradually mix in mustard and vinegar, then add cream and stir smoothly.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the cold cooked vegetables in a double ring around the dish, alternating potatoes and beetroot, with celery in the center.

  2. Shake finely minced parsley over the top.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Beetroot + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

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

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Beetroot + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the cream and mustard to give the dressing a smooth, rich body.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the dressing a smooth, creamy texture.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion in the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the cream.
Potatoes
Provide the starchy base of the salad, holding their shape when sliced and cooked.
Beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and colour to the salad.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in mustard and vinegar. Adding the liquids slowly to the egg yolks lets them emulsify evenly. Adding them all at once can cause the dressing to split or turn thin and greasy.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, beetroot, parsley, egg, mustard, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, beetroot, parsley, egg, mustard, vinegar, 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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