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Salad

Mixed Summer Salad

A salad of lettuce, mustard leaves, watercress, radishes, cucumber, hard‑boiled eggs, dressed with a mustard‑mayonnaise oil dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Mixed Summer Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Chop the lettuce and combine it with the mustard leaves, watercress, radishes, cucumber, and hard-boiled eggs in a large bowl.

Make and add the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the sugar, salt, pepper, prepared mustard, mayonnaise, and oil until smooth.

  2. Pour the dressing over the salad and mix well.

Serve

  1. Serve with a lump of ice in the middle.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  4. Radish + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together293 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

Lettuce
Forms the bulk of the salad, providing crisp texture and volume.
Mayonnaise
Provides fat and creaminess that coats the leaves and binds the dressing.
Oil
Adds fat to the dressing, smoothing its texture and carrying flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture from the cooked yolks.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp, acidic bite that balances the richness of the mayonnaise and oil.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the mustard and radishes.

The step that matters

Dressing the salad. Mixing the dressing in well makes sure every leaf is evenly coated. Because mayonnaise and oil are emulsions, stirring until smooth first keeps the dressing from separating and turning greasy on the leaves.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, mustard, watercress, cucumber, egg, sugar, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, mustard, watercress, cucumber, 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.

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