Name: Beef Bouilli Salad
Ingredients: cold meat, thinly sliced; salt; pepper; 2 shallots, finely chopped; 2 teaspoons chopped parsley; 2 teaspoons chopped onion; 1 tablespoon vinegar; 2 tablespoons oil; cold potatoes, sliced

Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Bouilli Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

Layer the cold meat in a vegetable dish.
Sprinkle salt and pepper over the meat.
Add the finely chopped shallots, parsley, and onion.
Drizzle with vinegar and oil.

Serve

Serve with sliced cold potatoes as a good addition.

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.

Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat: Forms the base of the salad and provides its main body and savory flavor.
Shallots: Adds a mild, sharp onion flavor that cuts through the richness of the meat.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dish and balances the oil.
Oil: Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavor and softening the meat's texture.
Cold potatoes: Adds starchy bulk to make the salad more filling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, shallot, parsley, vinegar, potato):

Chivefits better
Mustardfits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, shallot, parsley, vinegar, potato. 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.