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Salad

English Salad

A salad of coss lettuce, mint, salad oil, vinegar, sugar, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mint work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 569 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

English Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rinse and wipe the lettuce leaves with a soft cloth.

  2. Split the leaves down the stalk and divide each half into four pieces.

Dress and serve

  1. Place the lettuce and mint in a salad bowl.

  2. Season with salad oil, vinegar, sugar, pepper, and salt, then mix well 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 + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  3. Mint + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and holds the dressing.
Salad oil
Carries fat-soluble flavour and coats the leaves to add a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the vinegar and rounds out the dressing's flavour.

The step that matters

Dry the lettuce before dressing. Water on the leaves dilutes the dressing and stops the oil from clinging, so the salad turns limp and bland. Wiping the leaves thoroughly keeps the dressing concentrated on the surface.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, vinegar, sugar, 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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