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Dandelions and Potato Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dandelions and Potato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Gather and clean the dandelions, then press dry and cut into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Slice the same amount of cold boiled potatoes and place them in a salad bowl with the dandelions.

  3. Add several minced green onions, then season with coarse sea salt and Cayenne pepper.

  4. Cut the bacon into small dice and fry until golden.

  5. Add a little vinegar to the bacon and pour it over the salad gradually, mixing gently.

  6. Serve on a salad plate with a leaf of lettuce underneath and garnish with capers.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Dandelion + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Dandelion + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (dandelion, onion, pepper, vinegar, lettuce, capers):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against dandelion, onion, pepper, vinegar, lettuce, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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