Name: Dandelion Salad
Ingredients: 1 quart white dandelion leaves; 1 pinch salt; 1 pinch pepper; 1 tablespoon vinegar; 1½ tablespoons sweet oil

Why it works: Dandelion and pepper work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77 recipes. Both carry 2-heptenal, which smells green. The science ↓

Dandelion Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Pare away the roots and stale leaves from the dandelion.
Wash the leaves thoroughly in two waters and drain on a cloth.
Place the leaves in a salad bowl.

Dress and serve

Mix the salt, pepper, vinegar, and sweet oil together.
Pour the dressing over the salad 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.

Dandelion + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together77 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Dandelion + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together57 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

White dandelion leaves: Form the bulk of the salad and provide a crisp, slightly bitter base.
Sweet oil: Carries the flavor of the dressing and coats the leaves to add richness.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the bitterness of the greens.

“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.