Name: Cold Sauces, Salads, Etc
Ingredients: 5 tablespoons oil; 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; ½ teaspoon black pepper; 2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar (or common/cucumber vinegar)

Why it works: Pepper and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,399 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cold Sauces, Salads, Etc

Ingredients

5 tablespoons oil
1 tablespoon coarse sea salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar (or common/cucumber vinegar)

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the oil, salt, and pepper.
Pour the mixture over the salad and toss well.
Add the tarragon vinegar and mix thoroughly.
Serve immediately.

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.

Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,399 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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Cold Sauces, Salads, Etc