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English Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

English Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place lettuce leaves on a solid dish as a foundation.

  2. Break watercress over the lettuce.

  3. Add very thinly sliced boiled beets.

  4. Drop some mayonnaise dressing over the beets.

  5. Sprinkle a layer of finely minced cabbage on top.

  6. Add a layer of thinly sliced radishes.

  7. Drizzle more mayonnaise dressing over the radishes.

  8. Top with a thin layer of watercress.

  9. Finish with a layer of thinly sliced egg.

  10. Serve on a lettuce leaf in a salad dish.

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. Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Watercress + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Cabbage + radishtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Lettuce + cabbagetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

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

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, watercress, radish, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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