Skip to main content
Salad

Beef Salad

A salad of diced corned beef, beet, celery, watercress, topped with aspic jelly and served with cream dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 167 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Cut the corned beef into dice.

  2. Place the diced corned beef on a soup plate.

  3. Pour the aspic jelly over the beef.

  4. Once cold, cut the jelly into blocks.

  5. Shred the celery.

  6. Cut the beet into dice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the celery and beet in alternate bunches around a dish.

  2. Make a border with the watercress.

  3. Pile the blocks of meat in the center.

  4. Serve with cream salad dressing.

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. Celery + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Beef + watercresstop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together94 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Corned beef
Provides the savoury, chewy meat base that gives the salad its main bulk and flavour.
Aspic jelly
Sets as it cools, binding the diced beef into firm blocks and adding moisture.
Celery
Adds a crisp, fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft meat and jelly.
Beet
Adds earthy sweetness and a bright colour against the pale jelly and meat.

The step that matters

Cut the jelly only once it is fully cold and set. Aspic is a gelatin gel that firms as it cools. If it is cut before it has fully set, the blocks smear, crumble and lose their shape, so chill it until firm first.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, watercress):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, watercress. 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