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Dutch Salad

A salad of anchovies, herring, sausage, fowl or veal, beet-roots, pickled cucumbers, potatoes, capers, olives, eggs, dressed with oil, tarragon vinegar, white pepper, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 379 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dutch Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Wash, split, and bone the anchovies, then roll each one up.

  2. Wash, split, and bone the herring, then cut it into small pieces.

  3. Cut the Bologna or Lyons sausage (or smoked ham) into small dice.

  4. Cut the cold roast fowl or veal into small dice.

  5. Cut the beet-roots, pickled cucumbers, and cold boiled potatoes into small dice, using at least three times as much potato as any other ingredient.

Make the salad

  1. Add the capers, minced yolks and whites of hard-boiled eggs, and olives to the mixture.

  2. Mix all ingredients well, reserving the olives and anchovies for garnish.

Dress and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, beat together oil, Tarragon vinegar, white pepper, and French mustard to taste.

  2. Pour the dressing over the salad and serve.

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. Capers + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cucumber + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury flavour and a firm, rolled texture to the salad.
Herring
Contributes rich, savoury flavour and a tender, flaky body to the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add creamy richness and body, with the yolks and whites giving contrasting textures.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad, adding soft body and absorbing the dressing.
Oil
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the dressing.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the rich ingredients.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, cucumber, capers, egg, olive, tarragon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, cucumber, capers, 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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