Skip to main content
Salad

Dutch Salad

A salad of anchovies, herring, sausage ham, fowl veal, pickled cucumbers, boiled potatoes, olives, and a dressing of oil, tarragon vinegar, white pepper, French mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  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.

Assemble and serve

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

  2. Beat together oil, Tarragon vinegar, white pepper, and French mustard to taste.

  3. 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

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad and add a soft, starchy body to each bite.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks add richness and creaminess to the dressing; whites add mild texture.
Herring
Provides the strong, salty, oily fish flavour that defines the salad.
Anchovies
Contribute a concentrated salty, savoury depth to the salad.
Pickled cucumbers
Add acidity and a crisp, tangy contrast to the rich ingredients.
French mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar dressing.

The step that matters

Beating the dressing. Oil and vinegar separate unless beaten vigorously with mustard, which acts as an emulsifier. A well-emulsified dressing coats the diced ingredients evenly instead of pooling at the bottom of the bowl.

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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes