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Salad

Spring Salad

A salad of freshly cut spring vegetables dressed with mustard, salt, pepper, vinegar, olive oil, and optional tarragon vinegar, garnished with beetroot, egg, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spring Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the vegetables carefully and dry them thoroughly.

  2. Tear the vegetables into small pieces and arrange them in a salad bowl.

  3. Garnish with radishes, onions, parsley, nasturtium leaves, beetroot, and hard-boiled egg.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add vinegar and tarragon vinegar, if using, and stir into the salad.

  3. Drizzle in olive oil and mix gently.

  4. 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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young spring vegetables
Provide the crisp, fresh leaves and texture that form the body of the salad.
Mustard
Helps oil and vinegar hold together as a smoother, cohesive dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.
Olive oil
Adds fat and silky mouthfeel, and carries flavour across the leaves.

The step that matters

Dress and serve immediately. Salt and acid draw water from delicate leaves, so they wilt if dressed too early. Mixing gently coats the leaves without bruising them, and serving right away keeps them crisp.

Swap the tarragon

The recipe marks tarragon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, radish, mustard, onion, pepper, vinegar, olive):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, radish, mustard, onion, pepper, vinegar, 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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