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Salad

Grouse Salad, Plain

A salad of cooked grouse served on lettuce with cress, hard‑boiled eggs, shallots, tarragon vinegar, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Grouse Salad, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cooked grouse into joints or slices.

Assemble and dress

  1. Arrange the grouse on a bed of plainly-dressed lettuce.

  2. Put a border of cress and hard-boiled eggs around the grouse, alternating them.

  3. Sprinkle the game with chopped shallots and a few drops of tarragon vinegar.

  4. Pour the dressing over the salad, ensuring enough to moisten the lettuce and the game.

  5. Optionally, add a pinch of sugar to improve the lettuce.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + shallottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 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

Cooked grouse
Provides the main meat, with its savoury flavour as the centrepiece of the salad.
Lettuce
Forms the base bed and adds crisp, cool texture that the dressing moistens.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, firm texture against the lean game.
Chopped shallots
Add a mild, sharp onion-like aroma and bite to the game.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and aromatic tarragon flavour that cuts the richness of the meat and dressing.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing over the salad, ensuring enough to moisten the lettuce and the game.. Too little dressing leaves the lettuce dry and the game bland, while too much makes the leaves limp and soggy. Dressing should coat the surfaces evenly so the flavours are balanced and the leaves keep some crispness.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, shallot, tarragon, vinegar, sugar. 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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