Skip to main content
Main

Lettuce Salad with French Dressing

A salad of lettuce tossed with French dressing and fresh herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad with French Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Remove all tough, green leaves from the lettuce heads.

  2. Break off the tender leaves one by one and rinse them in cold water.

  3. Shake off the water and lay the leaves on a piece of cheesecloth, then place on ice.

Assemble and serve

  1. At serving time, place the leaves in a salad bowl.

  2. Tear the herbs into small bits and sprinkle them over the lettuce.

  3. Sprinkle the dressing over the salad, one spoonful at a time.

  4. Gently lift and turn the salad with a spoon and fork until all the dressing is used.

  5. 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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chive + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together261 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

Lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy base of the salad and carries the dressing.
French dressing
Adds oil, acid and seasoning that coat the leaves and give the salad its flavor.
Chives
Add a mild onion-like aroma and fresh flavor to the salad.
Tarragon
Adds a distinctive anise-like aroma and herbal flavor.
Chervil
Adds a delicate, fresh herbal flavor to the salad.

The step that matters

Dress the salad just before serving, one spoonful at a time. Acid and oil in the dressing wilt and soften delicate leaves quickly. Adding it gradually and tossing gently coats each leaf evenly without bruising or drowning the lettuce.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chive, tarragon, chervil):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucethe original
  3. Beetrootfits less well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chive, tarragon, chervil. 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.

You might also like

Creamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes