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Salad

French Lettuce Salad

A salad of French cos lettuce dressed with oil, wine or vinegar, chives, tarragon, chervil, parsley, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

French Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Split the French cos lettuces down the stalk and divide the leaves into three or four pieces.

  2. Rinse the leaves in cold water and shake well in a light wire basket to drain.

Season and dress

  1. Place the lettuces in a salad bowl and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Sprinkle over the chopped chives, tarragon, chervil, and parsley.

  3. Mix two to three parts of salad oil with one part of French wine or tarragon vinegar in a separate bowl. If preferred, mix in a little French mustard.

  4. Use a wooden fork or spoon to mix the dressing before pouring it over the salad.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

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

French cos lettuces
Forms the crisp, leafy base of the salad.
Salad oil
Carries flavour and coats the leaves with a smooth, rich texture.
French wine or tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Chives
Contributes a mild onion aroma to the salad.

The step that matters

Drain the lettuce well before dressing. Water left on the leaves dilutes the oil and vinegar dressing, so it slides off instead of coating the leaves evenly and leaves the salad watery.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, pepper, chive, tarragon, chervil, parsley, wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, pepper, chive, tarragon, chervil, parsley, wine. 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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