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Dandelion Salad

A salad of dandelion greens topped with crispy bacon and a custard dressing made from butter, cream, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dandelion Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

  1. Wash and prepare the dandelion greens as you would lettuce.

  2. Pat the greens dry with a cloth.

  3. Place the dandelion in a salad bowl.

  4. Fry the bacon until crispy and sprinkle over the dandelion.

Make the dressing

  1. In a skillet, combine butter and cream over low heat.

  2. Beat the eggs with salt, black pepper, sugar, and vinegar, then pour into the warmed cream.

  3. Stir the mixture in the skillet until it thickens into a custard.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour the hot dressing over the dandelion and stir thoroughly.

  2. Place the bowl on the stove for one minute, then 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Dandelion greens
Form the bulk of the salad and provide a bitter, leafy base for the dressing.
Bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat and crisp texture to the salad.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the dressing, giving it a smooth mouthfeel.
Cream
Combines with the egg to thicken the dressing into a silky custard.
Eggs
Thicken the warm dressing into a custard as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the cream, butter and bacon.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture in the skillet until it thickens into a custard.. Egg proteins set gradually at moderate heat. If the heat is too high or the mixture is not stirred, the eggs can scramble and turn grainy instead of forming a smooth, pourable custard.

“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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