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Beetroot and Potato Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 184 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beetroot and Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the Spanish onion tied in a clean piece of cloth until firm.

  2. Slice the cold boiled kidney potatoes and beetroot.

  3. Layer the potatoes and beetroot in a salad bowl.

  4. Make a salad sauce with cream, raw mustard, pepper, salt, and tarragon vinegar.

  5. Pour the sauce over the layered vegetables.

  6. Garnish with sliced hard boiled eggs and sprinkle with chopped tarragon and chervil.

  7. Keep the salad in a cool place until 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. Beetroot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Beetroot + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

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

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, potato, beetroot, mustard, pepper, tarragon, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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