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Salad

Watercress Salad

A salad of watercress, cabbage, sweet pepper, onion, seasoned with lemon juice, olive oil, celery salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Watercress Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over the watercress, removing wilted leaves and lower stems, and keep it in cold water until serving to maintain crispness.

  2. Chop the white cabbage, green sweet pepper (removing seeds and white skin), and onion.

  3. Soak the chopped vegetables in cold water for 30 minutes to reduce strong flavors.

Dress and serve

  1. Drain the vegetables and mix with lemon juice and olive oil to taste.

  2. Season with celery salt and a dash of pepper if desired.

  3. Serve the seasoned vegetables on a bed of watercress.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Watercress
Provides the crisp, peppery leaves that form the base and fresh flavour of the salad.
White cabbage
Adds crunchy texture and bulk to the salad.
Green sweet pepper
Adds crisp texture and a mild, fresh vegetable sweetness.
Onion
Adds sharp aromatic flavour to the vegetable mix.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smooth richness that carries the flavours of the dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the vegetables and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Soaking the chopped vegetables. Soaking in cold water for 30 minutes draws out some of the strong sulphur-containing compounds in onion and cabbage, mellowing their harsh bite. The vegetables must then be drained well, because leftover water dilutes the dressing and makes the salad soggy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (watercress, cabbage, pepper, lemon, olive, celery):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against watercress, cabbage, pepper, lemon, olive, celery. 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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