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Salad

Hot Dandelion Salad

A salad of fresh dandelion leaves tossed with salt, pepper, bacon, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Dandelion and pepper work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77 recipes. Both carry 2-heptenal, which smells green. The science ↓

Hot Dandelion Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the dandelion leaves in several washes and drain them.

  2. Arrange the leaves in a salad bowl and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Break the bacon into small pieces and fry until cooked.

  4. Add the bacon fat to the salad.

Dress and serve

  1. Heat the vinegar in the pan and pour it over the salad 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. Dandelion + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Dandelion + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh dandelion leaves
Form the bulk of the salad and provide its bitter, leafy base.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor, which the warm fat carries over the leaves.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the bitter leaves and balances the rich bacon fat.

The step that matters

Heat the vinegar before pouring it over the salad. Warm vinegar and warm bacon fat coat the leaves and release more aroma and flavor than cold dressing would. Pour it just before serving so the leaves wilt lightly without going limp.

“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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