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Salad

Water-cress Salad

A crisp salad of watercress, parsley, olives, sour apple slices, dressed with vinegar, oil, salt, pepper, and garnished with chopped hard‑boiled egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 469 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Water-cress Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the watercress leaves in cold water to make them crisp, then wipe them dry.

Assemble and serve

  1. Sprinkle the chopped parsley and olives over the watercress.

  2. Add the slices of sour apples.

  3. In a bowl, mix the vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper.

  4. Pour the dressing over the salad and toss gently.

  5. Garnish with the chopped hard-boiled egg.

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. Watercress + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Watercress + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together684 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Watercress + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Watercress leaves
Provide the crisp, peppery leafy base of the salad.
Oil
Carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Sour apples
Add tart crunch and contrast to the bitter greens.

The step that matters

Drying the watercress. Leaves that stay wet dilute the dressing so it slides off instead of clinging, and the salad turns limp. Wiping them dry lets the oil and vinegar coat the leaves evenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (watercress, parsley, olive, vinegar, pepper, egg):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against watercress, parsley, olive, vinegar, pepper, egg. 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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