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Salad

Chicory Salad

A salad of blanched chicory seasoned with salt, cayenne pepper, olive oil, malt vinegar, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,665 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Chicory Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicory

  1. Trim off the green leaves from the chicory heads.

  2. Pick apart and wash the chicory thoroughly.

  3. Soak in salt water for 1 hour, then drain and press dry with a clean cloth.

Dress and serve

  1. Rub a salad bowl with the garlic clove.

  2. Add the chicory to the bowl.

  3. Season with salt and Cayenne pepper.

  4. Pour in olive oil.

  5. Mix well.

  6. Add a few drops of malt vinegar.

  7. Serve in the same bowl.

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. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Chicory + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Chicory + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicory heads
Form the bulk of the salad, providing crisp, slightly bitter leaves.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smooth mouthfeel, carrying the seasoning across the leaves.
Malt vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the bitter chicory flavour.

The step that matters

Press the chicory dry. Water left on the leaves dilutes the oil and vinegar dressing, so it will not cling to the leaves and the salad turns watery. Pressing the leaves dry lets the dressing coat them evenly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicory, pepper, olive, malt, vinegar, garlic):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicory, pepper, olive, malt, vinegar, garlic. 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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