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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of lettuce with a dressing of garden cress, tarragon, chervil, egg yolks, oil, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Trim and wash the lettuce thoroughly, then drain well.

  2. Break the leaves into convenient-sized pieces.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the garden cress, tarragon, chervil, and egg yolks, and rub through a fine sieve.

  2. Add the salad oil, wine vinegar, and French mustard, and mix until smooth.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the lettuce, mix carefully, and 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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Garden cress + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Garden cress + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Garden cress + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together18 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar into a smooth, thick dressing.
Salad oil
Adds fat and a silky mouthfeel that coats the leaves.
Wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
French mustard
Helps bind the oil and vinegar and adds a sharp note.

The step that matters

Rub the herbs and yolks through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked yolks and herbs through a sieve breaks them into a fine paste, so they blend evenly into the dressing. Lumps left behind would make the dressing grainy and uneven on the leaves.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garden cress, tarragon, chervil, egg, wine, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garden cress, tarragon, chervil, egg, wine, vinegar, mustard. 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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