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Beetroot, Dressed

A beetroot salad with anchovy, egg, capers, shallot, lemon juice, anchovy essence, buttered bread, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beetroot, Dressed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Prepare thin slices of buttered brown bread.

  2. Cut out 5 or 6 rounds about 2 inches in diameter.

  3. Cover the rounds with slices of beetroot of corresponding size and thickness.

  4. Slice the hard-boiled egg.

  5. Select 5 or 6 suitable rings of egg white.

  6. Place the egg white rings on the beetroot rounds.

Make the topping

  1. Pass the remaining egg yolk through a sieve.

  2. Mix the sieved yolk with capers and shallot.

  3. Add lemon juice and anchovy essence to the mixture to form a moist paste.

  4. Season to taste.

  5. Pile the mixture in the center of the rounds.

  6. Garnish with fine strips of anchovy.

Serve

  1. Serve.

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. Capers + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beetroot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beetroot + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg
Yolk is sieved and bound into the paste that forms the topping.
Capers
Add sharp, salty brininess that contrasts with the sweet beetroot.
Shallot
Adds a sharp, aromatic bite to the yolk paste.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the paste and balances the richness of the yolk.
Anchovy
Adds deep savory saltiness and umami to the topping.
Beetroot
Forms the earthy, sweet base layer that the topping sits on.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, anchovy, egg, capers, shallot, bread, butter):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Pumpkinfits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, anchovy, egg, capers, shallot, bread, butter. 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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