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Salad

Meat Salad

A cold salad of sliced meat dressed with a vinaigrette of egg, parsley, mustard, vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meat Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Hard boil the egg and remove the shell.

  2. Chop the egg very fine.

  3. In a small bowl, mix the egg, parsley, dry mustard, salt, and pepper.

  4. Add the vinegar and mix again.

  5. Add the oil and stir until the sauce is smooth.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the meat into very thin slices and place in a salad bowl.

  2. Pour the sauce over the meat and let it soak for about 30 minutes.

  3. Mix well before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the body of the salad, and thin slices let it soak up the sauce evenly.
Hard boiled egg
Chopped fine, it thickens the sauce and adds richness and body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the sauce and balances the oil.
Oil
Adds fat and smoothness, helping the sauce coat the meat.

The step that matters

Add the oil and stir until the sauce is smooth. Oil must be stirred in gradually so it emulsifies with the vinegar and egg. If it is added too quickly or not mixed enough, the sauce separates and fails to coat the meat evenly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, 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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