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Salad

Raw Salpicon

A raw salad of diced fowl, anchovies, herrings, apple, beetroot, seasoned with pepper, salt, cayenne, dressed in sweet oil and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 172 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Raw Salpicon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Cut the breast of fowl into small square dices.

  2. Wash the anchovies and Dutch herrings, then cut them into small square dices.

  3. Peel the raw apple and cooked beetroot, and cut them into small square dices.

Assemble and dress

  1. Combine all the diced ingredients in a basin.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Mix the sweet oil and vinegar, then pour over the mixture.

Serve

  1. Place the salpicon in the center of a dish and garnish with sliced gherkins or French chives.

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 + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + chivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Apple + beetroottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Beetroot + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,682 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Breast of fowl
Provides the main cooked meat, giving the salpicon its substance and bite.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that stands out against the other diced ingredients.
Dutch herrings
Contribute richness and a salty, oily savour to the mixture.
Raw apple
Adds crisp texture and a mild acidity that brightens the dish.
Cooked beetroot
Adds colour and an earthy sweetness to the diced mixture.
Sweet oil
Carries flavour and moistens the diced ingredients, adding fat to the dressing.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, pepper, vinegar, chive):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, pepper, vinegar, chive. 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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