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Salad

To Dress Dandelions Ltke Spinach, or As a Salad

A salad of young dandelion leaves dressed with oil and vinegar or served with butter, flour, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Dandelion and flour share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Dress Dandelions Ltke Spinach, or As a Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the leaves

  1. Wash the young dandelion leaves thoroughly.

  2. Boil the leaves in a large pot of salted water until tender.

  3. Drain the leaves well and press them dry with a wooden spoon.

Serve

  1. Serve the leaves plain with melted butter, or chop and heat them with salt, pepper, butter rolled in flour, and gravy or cream.

  2. For a salad, use very young leaves, wash and drain them, then dress with oil and vinegar or your preferred sauce.

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 + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Dandelion + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Young dandelion leaves
Provide the main body and bitter, leafy flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy coating to the cooked leaves.
Flour
Thickens the butter and any gravy or cream into a light sauce.
Gravy or cream
Adds moisture and savoury body to the chopped, heated leaves.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that cuts the bitterness of the leaves in the salad.
Oil
Carries flavour and gives the salad dressing a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Press the leaves dry after boiling. Excess water dilutes the butter, flour and cream sauce and stops the leaves from holding it. Pressing removes that water so the dressing or sauce clings properly.

“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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