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Salad

French Salad

A salad of blanched endive tossed with a tarragon vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and tarragon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

French Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the endive.

  2. Break it into small pieces by hand.

  3. Wash the endive.

  4. Dry the endive in a basket or cloth.

  5. Arrange the endive in a salad bowl.

  6. Sprinkle with minced herbs.

Dress and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix salt and pepper into ⅓ cup of olive oil until dissolved.

  2. Add 4 additional tablespoons of olive oil.

  3. Pour over the salad.

  4. Toss the salad well.

  5. Add 2 tablespoons of tarragon vinegar and mix thoroughly.

  6. 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.

  1. Endive + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Endive + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

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

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tarragon + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Endive
Forms the crisp, leafy base of the salad and gives it its main texture.
Olive oil
Coats the leaves and carries the seasoning, adding fat and a smooth mouthfeel.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the oil and balances its richness.
Fresh herbs
Add aroma and a fresh, green flavor to the salad.

The step that matters

Add the vinegar last and mix thoroughly. Acid is added after the oil so it can be tossed evenly through the dressing and across the leaves. Thorough mixing spreads the seasoning and prevents pooled oil or vinegar on the bowl bottom, which would leave some bites bland or sharp.

Swap the endive

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, pepper, olive, vinegar. 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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