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Salad

Cheese Salad

A salad of grated cheese mixed with egg yolk, olive oil, mustard, vinegar, salt, sugar, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, rub together the yolk of the hard-boiled egg and olive oil until smooth.

  2. Add salt, cayenne pepper, sugar, and mustard; mix well.

Combine and serve

  1. Stir in the grated cheese until fully combined.

  2. Add the vinegar and mix again.

  3. Serve in crab shells or small china dishes.

  4. Enjoy with biscuits and butter.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated cheese
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides its rich, savoury flavour.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Emulsifies with the oil to give the dressing a smooth, creamy body.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smoothness, carrying flavour through the cheese.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cheese and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Rub the yolk and oil until smooth. The egg yolk and oil must be worked together until they form a smooth emulsion. If the oil is poured in too quickly or the yolk is not mashed fine, the dressing can stay greasy and lumpy, and it will not coat the grated cheese evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, olive, egg, sugar, pepper, mustard):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, olive, egg, sugar, pepper, mustard. 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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