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Salad

Dutch Salad

A salad of anchovies, herring, sausage, cold roast fowl, beet-roots, pickled cucumbers, potatoes, olives, and a vinaigrette.

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

  1. Remove the bones from the anchovies and roll them up.

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

  3. Dice the Bologna or Lyons sausage (or smoked ham) and the cold roast fowl (or veal).

  4. Dice the beet-roots, pickled cucumbers, and cold boiled potatoes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl, reserving the olives and anchovies for garnish.

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

  3. Pour the dressing over the salad and serve, garnished with olives and anchovies.

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

Potatoes
Make up the bulk of the salad, giving body and a mild starchy base for the other ingredients.
Herring
Provides the salty, oily fish flavour that is central to the salad's character.
Beet-roots
Add colour and an earthy sweetness that contrasts with the sharp dressing.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a creamy texture when the yolks and whites are minced separately.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the fatty 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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