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Salad

Water-cress Salad

A crisp salad of watercress, parsley, olives, sour apple slices, dressed with vinegar, oil, salt, pepper, and garnished with chopped hard‑boiled egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 469 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Water-cress Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the watercress leaves in cold water to make them crisp, then wipe them dry.

Assemble and dress

  1. Sprinkle the chopped parsley and olives over the watercress, then add the slices of sour apples.

  2. In a bowl, mix the vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper.

  3. Pour the dressing over the salad and toss gently.

  4. Garnish with the chopped hard-boiled egg.

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. Watercress + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Watercress + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together684 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Watercress + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Watercress
Provides the crisp, peppery leafy base of the salad.
Olives
Add salty, briny flavour that contrasts with the sharp dressing.
Sour apples
Add tart, crisp bite that balances the oil and salt.
Oil
Carries flavour and coats the leaves with a smooth richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and lifts the other flavours.

The step that matters

Dry the watercress before dressing. Wet leaves dilute the dressing and make it slide off, so the oil and vinegar do not coat them evenly. Wiping the leaves dry after soaking keeps the salad crisp and the dressing clinging.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (watercress, parsley, olive, vinegar, pepper, egg):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against watercress, parsley, olive, vinegar, pepper, 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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