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Salad

Dutch Salad

A salad of dressed fish, onions, beetroot, and a vinaigrette with anchovy, egg yolks, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,547 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dutch Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat of the dressed fish into shapes and arrange them on a dish.

  2. Place the baked or boiled Spanish onions and the boiled beet root in the center.

Make and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the salad oil, tarragon vinegar, salt, anchovy, hard-boiled egg yolks, common vinegar, cream, essence of ham, sherry wine, prepared mustard, and Cayenne pepper.

  2. Pour the sauce over the fish before serving.

  3. Serve with fried snippets of bread or pickled barberries.

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. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and vinegar to give the sauce a smooth, rich body.
Salad oil
Provides fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a smooth texture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and a sharp, aromatic note that balances the rich sauce.
Cream
Adds fat and softness, mellowing the sharpness of the vinegars.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and helps bind the sauce together.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and a mellow, aromatic sweetness to the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, tarragon, vinegar, anchovy, egg, cream, ham):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, tarragon, vinegar, anchovy, egg, cream, ham. 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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