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Salad

Endive Salad

A salad of endive, potatoes, celery, onion, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Endive Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the endive

  1. Remove the dark leaves from the endive and cut the rest into small pieces, splitting the stalk.

  2. Soak the endive in salt water for several hours to reduce bitterness.

Make the salad

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then drain and mash them with a fork.

  2. Mix in salt, pepper, chopped celery, chopped onion, and the soaked endive.

  3. Add mayonnaise to the mixture and combine well.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Endive + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together160 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Endive
Its natural bitterness is reduced by soaking in salt water, giving a milder salad.
Potatoes
Mashed when cooked, they form the creamy base that holds the salad together.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, binding the mashed potato and vegetables into a creamy texture.
Onion
Adds sharp, aromatic flavour that brightens the rich mayonnaise and potato.

The step that matters

Soaking the endive in salt water. Soaking for several hours draws out and dilutes the bitter compounds in endive. Skipping or shortening it leaves the salad noticeably bitter.

Swap the endive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, celery, onion):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, celery, onion. 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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