Skip to main content
Salad

Salads for Serving with Roast Meats

A mayonnaise-based salad of cauliflower or egg whites, green vegetables, aspic, and fish, garnished with beetroot, olives, capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Artichoke and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salads for Serving with Roast Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If using cauliflower, chop it finely.

  2. If not using cauliflower, mix chopped egg whites with aspic.

  3. Prepare your green vegetables or substitute as needed.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a bowl, toss the vegetables and fish with mayonnaise until well coated.

  2. Fill the center of a mold with the mixture, ensuring it stands higher than the border.

  3. Garnish the surface with beetroot, olives, capers, and fish pieces.

  4. Decorate with mayonnaise colored pink or green as desired.

  5. Serve alongside roast meats, with a simple dressing of pepper, salt, and olive oil.

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. Artichoke + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beetroot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Artichoke + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cauliflower + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Cauliflower + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise
Coats the vegetables and binds them into a creamy, moist salad.
Cauliflower
Provides the main bulk and a firm, crisp texture when chopped finely.
Aspic
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when unmolded.

The step that matters

Filling the mold. Packing the mixture firmly into the mold without air pockets helps it hold its shape when unmoulded. Gentle pressing keeps the salad moist and compact.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, beetroot, olive, capers, fish, pepper):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, beetroot, olive, capers, fish, 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