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Salad

Italian Salad

A salad of herring, beetroot, boiled potatoes, capers, mustard, oil, and tarragon vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Italian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

  1. Wash the herring in cold water and soak it in milk for 1 hour.

  2. Cut the herring open, remove the bones, and slice the fish and meat.

  3. Arrange the fish and meat in a bowl.

Dress and serve

  1. Chop the capers and sprinkle them on top.

  2. Mix the mustard, oil, and vinegar gradually in a basin.

  3. Pour the dressing over the fish and meat.

  4. Cover with slices of cold potatoes.

  5. Garnish with cold vegetables, green pickles, chopped parsley, and small radishes.

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. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beetroot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt herring
Forms the main body of the salad as the central flavour and protein.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps bind the oil and vinegar into a dressing.
Oil
Carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, rich texture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and balances the oil.
Capers
Contribute briny, sharp bursts of flavour that cut through the rich fish.
Boiled potatoes
Add soft starch and body, mellowing the sharpness of the dressing.

The step that matters

Mix the mustard, oil, and vinegar gradually. Adding the oil slowly while mixing lets the mustard emulsify it with the vinegar, so the dressing stays smooth instead of separating into greasy layers.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, beetroot, tarragon, vinegar, capers):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, beetroot, tarragon, vinegar, capers. 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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