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Dutch Salad

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

  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) and cold roast fowl (or veal) into dice.

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

Mix and dress

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

Anchovies
Provide a salty, savoury flavour that seasons the whole salad.
Cold boiled potatoes
Make up the bulk of the salad and give it a soft, starchy body.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness from the yolks and a firm, mild texture from the whites.
Oil
Carries fat through the dressing, adding smoothness and mouthfeel to the salad.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich ingredients and balances the oil.
French mustard
Emulsifies the oil and vinegar and adds a sharp, pungent note.

The step that matters

Beat the dressing before pouring. Beating oil, vinegar and mustard together emulsifies them so the dressing coats the pieces evenly. Unbeaten, the oil separates and pools instead of clinging to the salad.

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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