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Salads and Salad Dressings

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

  1. Wash the salad greens thoroughly and soak in cold or ice water until crisp.

  2. Drain the greens and spread them on a towel; set aside in a cold place until serving.

  3. For dressing, sprinkle the salad with salt and pepper, then add olive oil and vinegar just 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

Swap the cucumber

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, watercress, chicory, olive, pepper, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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