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To Dress Dandelions Like Spinach, or As a Salad

A dish of young dandelion leaves cooked or served as a salad, dressed with butter, oil, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Dandelion and flour share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Dress Dandelions Like Spinach, or As a Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the leaves

  1. Wash the young dandelion leaves thoroughly.

  2. Boil the leaves in a large pot of salted water until tender.

  3. Drain the leaves well and press them dry with a wooden spoon.

Serve

  1. Serve the leaves plain with melted butter.

  2. Chop and heat the leaves with salt, pepper, butter rolled in flour, and gravy or cream.

  3. For a salad, serve the young leaves whole or break them into small pieces, then wash and drain.

  4. Dress the salad with oil and vinegar or your preferred sauce.

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. Dandelion + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Dandelion + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young dandelion leaves
Provide the main bitter, leafy body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour when melted or rolled in flour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream or gravy into a light sauce when heated with the leaves.
Gravy or cream
Adds moisture and body, softening the leaves into a creamy coating.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the bitter greens in the salad dressing.
Oil
Carries flavour and gives the salad dressing a smooth, glossy coating.

The step that matters

Drain and press the leaves dry. Boiled leaves hold a lot of water. Pressing them dry keeps the butter, cream or gravy from thinning out and stops the dish from becoming watery.

“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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