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Spinach Salad

A chilled spinach salad with mayonnaise dressing, capers, pickles, olives, and parsley, served on a slice of cooked tongue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Spinach Salad

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Spinach Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Drain and finely chop the cooked spinach. Season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and melted butter.

  2. Pack the mixture solidly in an individual mold and chill.

Assemble and serve

  1. Remove from the mold and arrange on a thin slice of cooked tongue cut in a circular shape. Garnish the base with a wreath of parsley.

  2. For the sauce, mix mayonnaise dressing with capers, pickles, olives, and parsley.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Spinach + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together99 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 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

Spinach
Forms the bulk of the salad and holds the molded shape once packed and chilled.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the spinach a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Mayonnaise dressing
Provides fat and creaminess to the sauce that accompanies the salad.
Capers
Adds sharp, briny acidity that contrasts with the mild spinach.

The step that matters

Packing the spinach solidly into the mold. Spinach holds a lot of water, so it must be drained well and packed firmly, otherwise the molded shape may collapse or weep when unmolded.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, lemon, butter, parsley, capers, olive):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Kalefits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, butter, parsley, capers, olive. 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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