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Chiffonade Salad

A mixed green salad with a dressing of egg, paprika, mustard, herbs, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chiffonade Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Cut the lettuce, romaine, chicory, escarole, tomato, beets, and celery into long slices.

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the hard-boiled egg as fine as possible with a fork.

  2. Add paprika, coarse sea salt, French mustard, chopped chives, chopped tarragon, oil, and vinegar to the mashed egg.

  3. Mix the dressing well and add it to the salad.

Serve

  1. Toss the salad to combine and serve.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + chicorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together261 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg
Mashed into the dressing, it adds body and richness that help it cling to the leaves.
French mustard
Its emulsifying compounds help the oil and vinegar blend into a smooth, stable dressing.
Oil
Coats the leaves and carries flavour, giving the dressing its richness and mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Mix the dressing well. Oil and vinegar separate unless thoroughly whisked or blended with an emulsifier like mustard and egg. Poorly mixed dressing pools at the bottom of the bowl and leaves the greens unevenly coated.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, chicory, celery, egg, mustard, chive, tarragon):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, chicory, celery, egg, mustard, chive, tarragon. 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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