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Salad

Mediterranean Mixed Salad

A salad of wakame or dulse, lettuce, cucumber, mustard cress, radishes, pickled onions, served with a tofu dressing.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Wakame and cucumber work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 9 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Time5 minutes

Ingredients

Contains: soy (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

  • For the dressing

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the salad ingredients in a large serving bowl.

  2. To prepare the dressing, bring a small amount of water to the boil, add the tofu and boil for 5 minutes.

Make the dressing

  1. Blend with the pickle water and oil, to your chosen consistency.

  2. Add some chives, to taste.

  3. Serve the dressing separately from the salad.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Wakame + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,356 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + cucumbertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,409 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + radishtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together296 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Tofu
Blended into a creamy base that gives the dressing body without heavy fat.
Wakame or dulse
Seaweed that adds a salty, savoury flavour and a tender chew to the salad.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp, watery base of the salad that gives it fresh crunch.
Radishes
Add a sharp, peppery bite and crisp texture to the mixed salad.

The step that matters

Boil the tofu for 5 minutes. Brief boiling heats the tofu through and firms it slightly, which helps it blend into a smooth, stable dressing rather than a thin or grainy one.

Flavor stand-ins for the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wakame, lettuce, cucumber, mustard, onion, tofu, olive):

  1. Welsh onionbetter flavor fit
  2. Chivebetter flavor fit
  3. Broccolibetter flavor fit
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wakame, lettuce, cucumber, mustard, onion, tofu, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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