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Salad

Salad, French Lettuce, Plain

A simple salad of French lettuce dressed with olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and optional tarragon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and tarragon 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 ↓

Salad, French Lettuce, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Clean the French lettuces, discarding any decayed or bruised leaves.

  2. Place the cleaned lettuce in a salad bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. In a tablespoon, combine the salt and pepper.

  2. Add olive oil to the mixture and stir with a fork.

  3. Pour the oil mixture over the lettuce.

  4. Add another tablespoon of olive oil.

Dress the salad

  1. Toss the lettuce leaves lightly with a spoon and fork.

  2. Mix the lettuce and oil well before adding vinegar to avoid uneven acidity.

  3. Add the vinegar.

  4. Mix again to dress the salad.

  5. Optionally, add finely chopped fresh tarragon leaves or use tarragon vinegar instead.

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. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Olive + tarragontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,323 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

French lettuces
Forms the body of the salad, with crisp leaves that hold the dressing.
Olive oil
Coats the leaves, carrying flavour and giving a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the leaves and draws out flavour from the dressing.

The step that matters

Mix the oil in well before adding the vinegar. Oil coats the leaves first, so when vinegar is added it spreads evenly. Adding vinegar to dry leaves or unmixed oil leaves some leaves sharp and others bland, since oil and vinegar do not mix on their own.

“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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