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Vegetable Salad, Bubsian Style

A chilled salad of celery or celeriac, potatoes, gherkins, apple, capers, anchovies, seasoned with pepper, salt, oil, vinegar, horseradish, mustard, and served with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and horseradish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 82 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad, Bubsian Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the celery or celeriac and potatoes until tender, then cool them.

  2. Trim and slice the cooled vegetables finely.

Combine and season

  1. In a bowl, combine the sliced vegetables, gherkins, apple, capers, and anchovies.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, oil, and vinegar, then add horseradish and mustard.

  3. Mix gently and let it sit for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Drain off excess moisture and serve in a salad bowl with mayonnaise dressing.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Celery + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Cooked and sliced, they form the bulk of the salad and soak up the dressing flavours.
Celery or celeriac
Provides the crisp, fresh-tasting body of the salad once cooked and sliced.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.
Anchovies
Contribute a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the flavour of the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the vegetables and balances the oil and mayonnaise.
Horseradish
Adds a pungent, sharp heat that gives the salad its characteristic bite.

The step that matters

Drain off excess moisture. Potatoes and celery release water as they sit in the dressing. If it is not drained off before serving, the salad can become watery and the mayonnaise thins and loses its body.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, potato, capers, pepper, olive, vinegar, horseradish):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, potato, capers, pepper, olive, vinegar, horseradish. 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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