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Salad

Cream Cheese Salads

A lettuce salad with cream cheese, herbs, and a lemon‑oil dressing, garnished with red radishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and tarragon 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 ↓

Cream Cheese Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the dressing by mincing the shallot and herbs, then mixing with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and salad oil.

Assemble and serve

  1. Separate the leaves of the lettuce and place a small lump of cream cheese in each leaf.

  2. Pour a spoonful of dressing over each leaf and arrange them on a dish.

  3. Garnish with red radishes.

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. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chervil + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream cheese
Provides a soft, creamy filling that contrasts with the crisp lettuce.
Salad oil
Carries the herbs and seasoning and coats the leaves with a light richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the fat of the oil and cheese.
Crisp lettuce
Forms the edible cup that holds the cream cheese and dressing.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, chervil, thyme, parsley, tarragon, pepper, lemon):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Kalefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, chervil, thyme, parsley, tarragon, pepper, lemon. 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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