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Beet Salad

A salad of boiled beets and cabbage tossed with sugar, mustard, salt, and cold vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beet Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the beets until tender, then skin and finely chop them.

  2. Finely chop the cabbage.

  3. Mix the chopped beets and cabbage together.

Season and cover

  1. Add sugar, mustard, and enough salt to season.

  2. Cover the mixture with cold vinegar.

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. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 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

Beets
Form the main body of the salad and supply its earthy flavor and color.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and bulk to the salad.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that complements the beets.
Cold vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the salad and sharpens its flavor.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, mustard, vinegar. 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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