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Cold Meat Salad

A salad of cold roast or boiled meat mixed with anchovy, shallot, parsley, oil, vinegar, mustard, and garnished with pickled gherkins and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cold Meat Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Cut the meat into strips about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide.

  2. Finely chop the shallots and anchovy fillets, and place them in a bowl.

  3. Add the parsley, oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper to the bowl and mix well.

Marinate

  1. Stir in the meat strips.

  2. Cover the bowl.

  3. Let it sit for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, arrange the salad in a pyramid shape in a salad bowl.

  2. Garnish with strips of gherkin and chopped capers, then serve.

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. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + mustardtop 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

Cold roast or boiled meat
Forms the body of the salad and provides its substance and bite.
Anchovy fillets
Add a salty, savoury depth that seasons the dressing.
Shallots
Contribute a sharp, mild onion flavour to the dressing.
Wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Salad oil
Provides fat and moisture that carries flavour and coats the meat.
French mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar dressing.

The step that matters

Letting the meat marinate. Resting the meat in the acidic, oily dressing lets flavours penetrate and softens the surface. Stirring occasionally keeps every strip evenly coated so no piece stays bland or dry.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, anchovy, shallot, wine, vinegar, mustard, pepper):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, anchovy, shallot, wine, vinegar, mustard, 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.

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