Skip to main content
Salad

Winter Salad

A salad of cooked beetroot or carrot, celery, potatoes, watercress, and a mustard vinaigrette with egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beetroot and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 143 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Winter Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the beetroot after cooking, being careful not to pierce the skin before cooking.

  2. Wash, dry, and slice the celery.

  3. Wash and dry the watercress lightly; separate into sprigs, cutting off the thick stalks.

  4. Chop the egg white finely and set aside.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, rub the egg yolk, sugar, salt, pepper, and mustard together smoothly.

  2. Gradually stir in the oil and vinegar, then add the chopped onion or parsley.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the beetroot, celery, potatoes, and watercress in the center of a dish.

  2. Pour the dressing over the salad and sprinkle the chopped egg white on top.

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. Beetroot + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + watercresstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Beetroot + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and vinegar, helping the dressing stay smooth and cohesive.
Oil
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the dressing body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the oil.
Mustard
Helps bind the emulsion and adds a sharp, pungent flavour.
Potatoes
Provide starchy bulk and a soft texture that absorbs some of the dressing.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the oil and vinegar. Adding the oil slowly to the egg yolk and mustard lets the fat disperse into tiny droplets, forming a stable emulsion. Adding it all at once can split the dressing into separate oil and liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, celery, potato, watercress, egg, sugar, pepper):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, celery, potato, watercress, egg, sugar, pepper. 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