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Salad

Herring Salad

A salad made with herring, cold beef or veal, hard‑boiled eggs, boiled potatoes, apples, cucumbers, pickled beets, and dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Herring Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

  1. Soak the herring in cold water overnight.

  2. Drain the herring and cut it into small pieces.

  3. Mix the herring with chopped cold beef or veal.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add the hard-boiled eggs, boiled potatoes, apples, cucumbers, and pickled beets, all cut into small squares.

  2. Serve with your preferred dressing and garnish with additional chopped hard-boiled eggs.

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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Potato + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

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

  3. Potato + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Apple + cucumbertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

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

  5. Beef + cucumbertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together576 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Herring
Provides the salty, fish-forward base that the other ingredients are mixed into.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the salad.
Boiled potatoes
Add bulk and a soft, starchy body that holds the salad together.
Apples
Add crisp texture and a mild acidity that cuts the richness of the fish and eggs.
Pickled beets
Add sweet-sour flavour and a vivid colour to the salad.

The step that matters

Soaking the herring overnight. Soaking draws out much of the salt that herring is cured in. Too short a soak leaves the fish overly salty, and the other ingredients cannot balance it.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg, potato, cucumber):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Pumpkinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, potato, cucumber. 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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