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Salad

English Salad

A salad of lettuce and mint dressed with oil, vinegar, sugar, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mint work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 569 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

English Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rinse and wipe the lettuce leaves with a soft cloth.

  2. Split the leaves down the stalk and divide each half into four pieces.

  3. Place the pieces in a salad bowl with the mint leaves.

Dress and serve

  1. Season with salad oil, vinegar, moist sugar, pepper, and salt.

  2. Mix well and serve.

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 + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  3. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cos lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy body of the salad.
Mint
Adds a fresh, aromatic flavour to the leaves.
Salad oil
Coats the leaves with fat, giving a smoother mouthfeel and carrying flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sugar.
Moist sugar
Adds a little sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Season with salad oil, vinegar, moist sugar, pepper, and salt.. Oil and vinegar do not mix, so the dressing separates quickly. Tossing the leaves thoroughly just before serving spreads the seasoning evenly and keeps the lettuce from wilting or tasting uneven.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, vinegar, sugar, pepper. 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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