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Salad

Italian Salad

A salad of cold fowl, mustard, cress, lettuce, eggs, and dressing of vinegar, oil, and tarragon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Italian Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Cut the white parts of the cold fowl into pieces.

  2. Mix the fowl with mustard, cress, and finely chopped lettuce.

  3. Cut the remaining hard boiled eggs into small pieces and mix them with the salad.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine vinegar, salad oil, coarse sea salt, mustard, and the yolks of hard boiled eggs and mix smoothly.

  2. Add a little tarragon vinegar to the mixture and pour it over the salad.

Garnish and serve

  1. Mix the whites of the hard boiled eggs and use them to garnish the dish, alternating with heaps of grated smoked beef.

  2. For presentation, pile the fowl in the center, pour the salad mixture over it, and create a wall of dressed salad around it, topping with rings of egg whites.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 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

Cold fowl
Provides the main body of the salad as lean, tender meat.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Their fat and richness emulsify with oil and vinegar to make a smooth, creamy dressing.
Salad oil
Adds fat and smoothness, carrying flavour and giving the dressing body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the rich oil and yolks.
Mustard
Its emulsifying compounds help hold the oil and vinegar together and add sharp flavour.
Lettuce
Adds crisp texture and bulk to the salad.

The step that matters

Emulsifying the dressing. Yolks, mustard and oil must be whisked slowly and smoothly so the oil stays suspended in the vinegar. If it is added too fast or not mixed well, the dressing separates and turns greasy rather than creamy.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, vinegar, egg, tarragon, beef. 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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