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Salad

Cold Meat Salad

A salad of cold roast or boiled meat with anchovy, shallots, oil, vinegar, mustard, parsley, and garnished with pickled gherkins and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cold Meat Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Cut the meat into strips about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide.

  2. Finely chop the shallots and anchovy fillets, and place them in a bowl.

  3. Add the parsley, salad oil, wine vinegar, and mustard to the bowl.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the meat strips.

Marinate and serve

  1. Cover and let it sit for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

  2. When ready to serve, arrange the salad in a pyramid shape in a salad bowl.

  3. Garnish with strips of gherkin and chopped capers, then 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. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides its chewy, savoury body.
Salad oil
Carries fat-soluble flavours and keeps the meat moist and coated.
Wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and softens the meat slightly over time.
Anchovy fillets
Contribute deep savoury, salty flavour that rounds out the dressing.
Shallots
Add a mild, sharp onion flavour that fades with resting.
French mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar into the dressing.

The step that matters

Stirring the meat during the 2-hour rest. Stirring spreads the acidic dressing evenly over every strip, so the meat absorbs flavour and no piece stays dry or overly sharp.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, anchovy, shallot, wine, 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.

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