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Salad

Dandelion Salad

A salad of finely chopped dandelions, lettuce, onion, eggs, and dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Dandelion and lettuce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dandelion Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut dandelions very fine, discarding the large stem ends.

  2. Cut the lettuce fine and combine with dandelions.

Combine and serve

  1. Add salt to taste.

  2. Mix in minced onion and chopped hard boiled eggs.

  3. Serve with salad dressing.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  3. Dandelion + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Dandelion + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dandelions
Provide the salad's main leafy body and its slightly bitter, fresh flavor.
Lettuce
Adds crisp, moist texture that keeps the salad light and crunchy.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and soft, creamy texture against the crisp greens.
Minced onion
Contributes sharp, pungent aroma and bite that cuts through the greens.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture, fat and seasoning that bind the salad's flavors together.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (dandelion, lettuce, egg):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against dandelion, lettuce, 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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