Name: Plain Salad-dressing
Ingredients: Lettuce leaves; Finest oil; Tarragon vinegar or red wine vinegar; Coarse sea salt; Freshly ground pepper

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

Remove the leaves from the stalk, discarding bruised or discolored ones.
Wash muddy leaves in a basin and drain thoroughly on a sieve.
If leaves are clean, do not wet them.
Once dry, tear the leaves into pieces and place them in a bowl.
While tossing the leaves with a wooden spoon and fork, drizzle the finest oil over them.
When the leaves are coated, add a few drops of vinegar and dust with salt and pepper.
Continue tossing the leaves while adding vinegar, salt, and pepper to avoid sediment.
Mix the salad just before serving to maintain crispness.

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.

Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together425 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,399 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

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