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Salad of Cress, Pepper-grass, and Chervil

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 207 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Salad of Cress, Pepper-grass, and Chervil

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash and carefully pick over the greens.

  2. Mix equal quantities of cress, pepper-grass, and chervil.

  3. Prepare the salad exactly as you would a Lettuce Salad.

  4. Add mustard-grass if in season.

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. Chervil + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + cherviltop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + grasstop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together37 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Grass + mustardtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, grass, chervil):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, grass, chervil. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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