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Salad

Russian Salad

A salad of diced vegetables dressed with vinegar, olive oil, mustard, salt, pepper, parsley, and topped with chopped hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Russian Salad

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Russian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Dice the fresh vegetables.

  2. Cook the diced vegetables separately until tender.

  3. Cool the cooked vegetables.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the cooled vegetables in a colorful design on a salad dish.

  2. In a bowl, mix the vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, mustard, and chopped parsley to make the dressing.

  3. Pour the dressing over the arranged vegetables.

  4. Garnish with the chopped hard-boiled eggs.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh vegetables
Form the bulk of the salad and provide its colour and texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the dressing body.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps the oil and vinegar stay combined in the dressing.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy contrast to the crisp-tender vegetables.

The step that matters

Cool the cooked vegetables before arranging. Vegetables that are still warm will soften further and release moisture, which can make the salad watery and blur the arranged design. Cooling them fully keeps their texture firm and the colours distinct.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, olive, pepper, parsley, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, olive, pepper, parsley, egg. 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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