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Salad

Roquefort Salad

A salad of crisp lettuce, hard‑boiled eggs, and Roquefort cheese dressed with tarragon vinegar, olive oil, salt, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Roquefort Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lettuce and tear it into bite-sized pieces.

  2. Crumble the Roquefort cheese into very small bits.

  3. Run the hard-boiled eggs through a ricer.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the tarragon vinegar, salt, olive oil, and paprika to make the dressing.

  2. Blend the dressing carefully with the cheese.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the cheese dressing with the lettuce until each leaf is coated.

  2. Serve in a salad bowl with crisp wafers.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tarragon + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Roquefort cheese
Provides a sharp, salty flavor and creamy texture when blended into the dressing.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil and cheese.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and mild richness to the salad as a finely riced garnish.
Olive oil
Forms the fat base of the dressing, carrying flavor and coating the lettuce.
Crisp lettuce
Forms the main body of the salad, giving crunch and a fresh base for the dressing.

The step that matters

Blend the dressing carefully with the cheese. Oil and vinegar separate easily, and adding them to crumbled cheese too quickly can leave the dressing greasy or lumpy. Blending gently and slowly helps the mixture emulsify and cling to the cheese.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roquefort cheese, vinegar, egg, olive, lettuce):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Garlicfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against roquefort cheese, vinegar, egg, olive, lettuce. 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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