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Boiled Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Boiled Salad

Why it works: Endive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Boiled Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil or bake onions, beetroot, celery, and French beans until tender.

  2. Combine the cooked vegetables in a bowl.

  3. Add a small quantity of raw endive, lettuce, chervil, or burnet on top for freshness.

  4. Drizzle with common salad dressing before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Endive + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

  2. Beetroot + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Beetroot + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cauliflower + broccolitop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together127 recipes

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

  5. Broccoli + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, beans, endive, lettuce):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, beans, endive, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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