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Salad

Olive Salad

A salad of lettuce, watercress, beetroot, herbs, olives, and anchovies dressed with a thickened egg and sour cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Olive Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg until frothy, then mix in the sour cream.

  2. Heat the mixture in a small saucepan over low heat until it thickens.

  3. Combine vinegar, onion, bay leaf, clove, celery, and peppercorns in another saucepan and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Strain the boiled mixture into the egg sauce, stirring until completely cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare a salad with lettuce, watercress, beetroot, chervil, chicory, and mustard and cress.

  2. Pour the sauce over the salad and arrange stoned olives filled with flaked and seasoned anchovies around it.

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 + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Celery + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg thickens the sour cream base into a smooth, lightly set sauce when heated gently.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a creamy body to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the richness of the cream.
Anchovies
Contribute a salty, savoury depth to the olives and the dish.

The step that matters

Heating the egg and sour cream mixture over low heat. Egg proteins set when heated, so over high heat or for too long the sauce can curdle or turn grainy. Gentle, low heat lets it thicken smoothly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, onion, celery, vinegar, lettuce, watercress):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, onion, celery, vinegar, lettuce, watercress. 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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