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Salad

Winter Salad

A salad of cooked beetroot or carrot, celery, potatoes, watercress, egg, and a dressing of olive oil, vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt, pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 143 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Winter Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel the beetroot after cooking, being careful not to pierce the skin before cooking.

  2. Wash, dry, and slice the celery.

  3. Wash and dry the watercress lightly, cutting off the thick stalks.

  4. Mix all the vegetables (except the onion and parsley) in the center of a dish or bowl.

  5. Chop the white of the hard-boiled egg finely.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, rub the yolk, sugar, salt, pepper, and mustard together smoothly.

  2. Gradually stir in the olive oil and vinegar, then add the onion or parsley.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the salad and sprinkle the chopped egg white on top.

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. Beetroot + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beetroot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Watercress + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 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

Beetroot or carrot
Adds colour, earthy sweetness and a firm, tender bite to the salad.
Potatoes
Provides body and bulk, soaking up some of the dressing to hold the salad together.
Hard-boiled egg
Yolk emulsifies into the dressing for a creamy texture; chopped white adds garnish and substance.
Olive oil
Carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the oil and sweetness.
Mustard
Acts as an emulsifier, helping the oil and vinegar stay combined in the dressing.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the olive oil and vinegar. Adding the oil slowly to the mustard and egg yolk lets the yolk emulsify it into a smooth dressing. Pouring it in all at once can cause it to separate and turn greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, celery, potato, watercress, egg, olive, tarragon):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, celery, potato, watercress, egg, olive, tarragon. 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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