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Salad

Plain Salad-Dressing

A simple dressing for lettuce using oil, tarragon vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Plain Salad-Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the leaves

  1. Remove the leaves from the stalk of the lettuce, discarding bruised or discolored ones.

  2. Wash the clean leaves in a basin and drain thoroughly on a sieve.

  3. Toss the leaves in a cloth to remove any remaining water.

Dress the salad

  1. Place the dry leaves in a bowl and have an assistant sprinkle oil over them while you stir with a wooden spoon and fork.

  2. Once the leaves are coated in oil, add a few drops of tarragon vinegar while continuing to stir.

  3. Dust the salad with coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, ensuring even distribution.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 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. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce leaves
Form the body of the salad, carrying the dressing on their surfaces.
Finest oil
Coats the leaves, adding a smooth mouthfeel and carrying flavour.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the oil and leaves.

The step that matters

Drying the leaves before dressing. Oil does not mix with water, so any water left on the leaves stops the oil from coating them evenly and dilutes the vinaigrette's flavour. Thorough drying lets the oil cling to the leaf surfaces.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, vinegar, 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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