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Salad

Another English Salad

A salad of cabbage lettuce, endive, celery, beetroot, and hard‑boiled egg yolks dressed with mustard, cream, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and endive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Another English Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Combine the cabbage lettuce, endive, shredded celery, and sliced beetroot in a bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with salt, mustard, and pepper in a separate bowl.

  2. Gradually mix in the double cream.

  3. Add the salad oil and vinegar to create the dressing.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the salad.

  2. Mix well.

  3. 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 + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Endive + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Endive + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed yolks form a thick, creamy base that emulsifies the oil into the dressing.
Double cream
Adds richness and body, softening the dressing's sharpness.
Salad oil
Provides fat that carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the fats.
Prepared mustard
Its emulsifiers help hold the oil and vinegar together in the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the salad oil. Oil must be added slowly to the mashed yolk and cream so it emulsifies; adding it too fast can cause the dressing to split and turn greasy.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, endive, celery, beetroot, egg, mustard, pepper):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, endive, celery, beetroot, egg, mustard, pepper. 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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