In haar salade doet Anna komkommer en paprika.

Because Dutch often puts the element you want to talk about first. Here, In haar salade is placed at the beginning to set the scene: we are talking about what goes into her salad.

This gives the sentence a slightly more marked or focused feel, something like:

• As for her salad, Anna puts cucumber and bell pepper in it.

A more neutral order would be:

• Anna doet komkommer en paprika in haar salade.

Both are grammatical.

This is because of the Dutch verb-second rule.

In a main clause, the finite verb usually comes in the second position. If something other than the subject comes first, the verb still stays second, and the subject moves after it.

So:

• Anna doet ... = subject first
• In haar salade doet Anna ... = another element first, so the verb comes next

Structure here:

• In haar salade = first element
• doet = finite verb in second position
• Anna = subject

This is a very common Dutch pattern.

Here doet does not mean does. In this sentence, doen means something like:

• put
• add

Dutch doen is often used in everyday speech for putting something somewhere, especially in informal contexts.

So in food-related contexts, iets in een salade doen means to put/add something into a salad.

More formal or specific alternatives could be:

• toevoegen = to add
• leggen / zetten = to place, but these are less natural here
• stoppen = to put/stuff, depending on context

Yes. That is probably the more neutral word order.

Compare:

• Anna doet komkommer en paprika in haar salade.
  Neutral statement.

• In haar salade doet Anna komkommer en paprika.
  More emphasis on in her salad.

So the original sentence is grammatical, but it has a slightly more deliberate focus.

Because these words are being used as ingredient words or food substances, not as individual whole objects.

So:

• komkommer = cucumber, some cucumber
• paprika = bell pepper, some bell pepper

This is very normal when talking about food ingredients.

If you said:

• een komkommer
• een paprika

that would suggest a whole cucumber or a whole bell pepper.

In a salad context, the bare nouns sound more natural because you usually mean some cucumber and some bell pepper, cut up as ingredients.

For the same reason: in food contexts, Dutch often uses these nouns in a kind of mass-noun way.

So komkommer does not necessarily mean one cucumber here. It means cucumber as an ingredient.

Likewise, paprika here means bell pepper as an ingredient.

This is similar to English when you say:

• I put cucumber in the salad
• We added pepper to the dish

You are not focusing on countable units, but on the ingredient itself.

In Dutch, paprika usually means the vegetable: a bell pepper.

If you want to say the spice, you would usually say:

• paprikapoeder = paprika powder

So in this sentence, learners should understand paprika as bell pepper, not the powdered spice.

Haar means her.

In many contexts, yes, haar salade will naturally be understood as Anna’s salad, especially since Anna is the person mentioned in the sentence.

But grammatically, haar could also refer to another female person mentioned earlier in the conversation. Dutch works the same way as English here: the exact reference depends on context.

So:

• haar salade = her salad
• often understood as Anna’s salad if no other female person is involved

Sometimes, but the meaning changes slightly.

• in haar salade doen = put into her salad
• door haar salade doen = mix into / through her salad

So in focuses on putting something inside the salad, while door can suggest mixing it through the salad.

Both can be possible in food contexts, but they are not always identical. In your sentence, in is perfectly fine.

Doen is very natural in everyday Dutch.

A Dutch speaker might say:

• Anna doet komkommer en paprika in haar salade.
• Anna voegt komkommer en paprika toe aan haar salade.

The difference is mainly tone:

• doen = everyday, simple, common
• toevoegen = a bit more formal or explicit

So the original sentence sounds normal, especially in spoken or basic everyday Dutch.