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Salad

An Excellent Salad of Young Vegetables

A salad of boiled artichoke bottoms, sliced new potatoes, young carrots, and herbs, seasoned with sea salt and optional olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 795 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the artichokes

  1. Remove the coarse, fibrous parts from the artichoke bottoms and boil until tender.

  2. Drain the artichokes and carefully remove the insides.

  3. Cut the artichokes into quarters and place them in a salad bowl.

Assemble and season

  1. Slice the cold new potatoes and young carrots thinly and arrange them over the artichokes.

  2. Strew minced tarragon and chervil over the vegetables.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and drizzle with olive oil if desired.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together795 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Artichoke + cherviltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Potato + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,105 recipes

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

  4. Artichoke + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Potato + olivetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Artichoke bottoms
Provide the tender, mild base of the salad once boiled.
New potatoes
Add starchy body and a soft, neutral bulk to the salad.
Young carrots
Add natural sweetness and a crisp, tender texture.
Tarragon
Adds a fresh, anise-like aroma that lifts the vegetables.

Flavor stand-ins for the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, potato, tarragon, chervil, olive):

  1. Chivebetter flavor fit
  2. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  3. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, potato, tarragon, chervil, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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