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Salad

Summer Salad

A salad of lettuce, radishes, cucumber, mustard, cress, hard‑boiled eggs, dressed with French salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Summer Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the ingredients in cold water for 1-2 hours if not very fresh.

  2. Drain them carefully using a cloth.

  3. Cut the lettuce into small pieces and slice the radishes and cucumber thinly.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the lettuce, radishes, and cucumber in a salad bowl.

  2. Top with mustard and cress, and garnish with slices of hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Pour French salad dressing underneath just before serving.

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 + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  3. Radish + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Lettuce
Forms the crisp base of the salad and carries the dressing.
Radishes
Add a sharp, peppery bite and crunch to the salad.
Cucumber
Adds cool, moist crunch that lightens the salad.
Mustard
Contributes a peppery, pungent flavour to the greens.
Cress
Adds a sharp, peppery leafy note and fresh aroma.

The step that matters

Drain the ingredients carefully. Leftover water dilutes the dressing and makes leaves limp, so the greens should be thoroughly dried before assembling.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, cucumber, mustard, egg):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cucumber, mustard, egg. 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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