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Salad

Salads and Salad Dressings

A mixed green salad with lettuce, watercress, chicory, cucumbers, olive oil, and French dressing, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and chicory share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 40 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salads and Salad Dressings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

  1. Wash the salad plants thoroughly.

  2. Soak them in cold or ice water until crisp.

  3. Drain and spread on a towel, then set aside in a cold place until serving.

Dress and serve

  1. Add dressing just before serving to prevent wilting.

  2. For left-over vegetables, mix with French dressing.

  3. Chill for one hour before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Watercress + cucumbertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy base of the salad.
Watercress
Adds crisp texture and a peppery flavour to the greens.
Chicory
Adds crunch and a slightly bitter note that balances the dressing.
Cucumbers
Add cool, moist crunch to the salad.
Olive oil
Carries flavour and gives the dressing its richness and body.

The step that matters

Add dressing just before serving. Salt and acid in the dressing draw water out of leaves, so dressing added too early makes greens limp and wilted. Holding it until serving keeps them crisp.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, watercress, chicory, olive):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, watercress, chicory, olive. 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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