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Roquefort Salad with Warm Croutons & Lardons

Roquefort is a fantastic cheese, with a great story behind it. A few hundred years ago there was a guy out in the forest eating some cheese, when a foxy chick walked past. Not wanting to miss out, he threw his cheese into a cave to keep it safe and ran after the girl. He returned a few weeks later to retrieve his cheese and found it had gone mouldy, but in a good way, and had really matured. Ever since then, proper authentic Roquefort has to be aged in those same stone caves of Mont Combalou at Roquefort-sur-Soulzon. Genius! This salad really shows off the Roquefort, and several other great French ingredients, most of which can be found without any trouble here in the UK. It's worth getting the smoked bacon from the butcher so you have lovely extra-large hand-cut lardons for this. The kick-ass mustard dressing adds a bit of flair at the end, and ultimately, this salad is my homage to my dear French friends and that lucky man from all those years ago who invented such a great cheese and hopefully had one of the best bunk-ups of his life!

By jamieoliver · From Open Recipes · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and roquefort cheese work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 13 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By jamieoliver. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Walnut + roquefort cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Red wine + vinegartop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Olive + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Olive + breadtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together999 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Olive + vinegartop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, bread, lamb, walnut, roquefort cheese, red wine, vinegar):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, bread, lamb, walnut, roquefort cheese, red wine, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).