Skip to main content
Salad

Meat Salad

A cold salad of sliced meat and finely chopped hard‑boiled egg, dressed with parsley, mustard, vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meat Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Hard boil the egg, then remove the shell and chop it very fine.

  2. In a small bowl, combine the chopped egg, parsley, dry mustard, salt, and pepper; mix well.

  3. Add the vinegar and mix again.

  4. Add the oil and stir until the sauce is smooth.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the cold meat into very thin slices and place them in a salad bowl.

  2. Pour the sauce over the meat and let it soak for about 30 minutes; mix well 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the body of the salad and soaks up the sauce as it rests.
Hard boiled egg
Chopped fine, it thickens the sauce and adds richness to the dressing.
Oil
Adds fat and smoothness, helping the sauce coat the meat evenly.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil and egg.
Dry mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that sharpens the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly while stirring. Oil and vinegar separate unless they are emulsified. Stirring the oil in gradually while mixing keeps the sauce smooth and helps it cling to the meat instead of pooling at the bottom of the bowl.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, egg, vinegar, mustard, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, vinegar, mustard, pepper. 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 SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes