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Salad

Salad for Serving with Roast Meats

A simple salad of watercress dressed with olive oil, salt, pepper, optional vinegar, and garnished with fine herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 684 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salad for Serving with Roast Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the watercress thoroughly.

  2. Place the watercress on a serving plate.

Dress and serve

  1. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper to taste.

  2. Drizzle with olive oil and add vinegar if desired.

  3. Garnish with a small plate of fine herbs.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Watercress
Forms the leafy base of the salad and carries the dressing.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, coating the leaves and carrying flavour.

The step that matters

Wash and dry the watercress thoroughly. Any water left on the leaves dilutes the oil and seasoning so they slide off rather than cling. Dry leaves hold dressing evenly and keep the salad from tasting watery.

“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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