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Salad

Salad

A salad of cabbage lettuce dressed with olive oil, tarragon vinegar, pepper, salt, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Remove all outside leaves from the lettuce and cut off the stalks close.

  2. Cut each head into quarters by slicing through the stalk and tearing the rest.

Make the dressing and toss

  1. In a salad bowl, combine olive oil, tarragon vinegar, pepper, and salt; beat with a fork for a few minutes.

  2. Add the lettuce and toss quickly for five minutes.

  3. Add the finely chopped mint.

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. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy body of the salad.
Olive oil
Carries flavor and gives the dressing a smooth, coating richness.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Beating the dressing before adding the lettuce. Beating the oil and vinegar with a fork for a few minutes helps them emulsify, so the dressing coats the leaves evenly rather than separating into oily and sharp pools.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, lettuce, olive, 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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