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Salad

Mixed Summer Salad

A salad of lettuce, mustard leaves, watercress, radishes, cucumber, hard‑boiled eggs, dressed with salt, pepper, sugar, mustard, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mixed Summer Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the lettuce, mustard leaves, watercress, radishes, and cucumber.

  2. Slice the hard-boiled eggs.

Dress and serve

  1. In a large bowl, combine all the chopped ingredients.

  2. Add salt, pepper, sugar, mustard, vinegar, and oil.

  3. Mix well and serve with a lump of ice in the middle.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Radish + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together293 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 bulk of the salad and holds the dressing.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and substance through their firm, mild protein.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the leaves and balances the oil.
Oil
Coats the leaves with fat, carrying flavour and softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Prepared mustard
Contributes sharpness and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar into the dressing.
White sugar
Rounds out the acidity and mustard with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Mix well with the dressing. Oil and vinegar separate unless the mustard is thoroughly whisked or mixed in, so the dressing can pool at the bottom. Mixing well coats each leaf evenly and keeps the acidity from tasting harsh in spots.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, mustard, watercress, cucumber, egg, pepper, sugar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, mustard, watercress, cucumber, egg, pepper, sugar. 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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