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Salad

Water-cress, Lettuce

A simple salad of watercress and lettuce dressed with olive oil, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and lettuce 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 ↓

Water-cress, Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine the watercress and lettuce.

  2. Drizzle with olive oil and vinegar.

  3. Toss gently to coat the greens evenly.

  4. Season with salt to taste.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Watercress + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  3. Watercress + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together684 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Watercress
Provides peppery flavor and crisp leafy body to the salad.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp, mild bulk of the salad.
Olive oil
Coats the leaves, adding fat, silkiness and mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the greens and oil.

The step that matters

Toss gently to coat the greens evenly. Delicate leaves bruise and wilt when handled roughly, and dressing added unevenly leaves some leaves greasy and others bare. Gentle tossing keeps leaves intact and coats them lightly with the oil and vinegar.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (watercress, olive, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against watercress, olive, vinegar. 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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