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Salad

Another English Salad

A salad of lettuce, endive, celery, beetroot, cucumber, and hard‑boiled yolks dressed with a mustard‑cream vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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. In a salad bowl, combine the lettuce, endive, celery, beetroot, and cucumber.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, mash the cold yolks with salt, mustard, sugar, and pepper using a wooden spoon.

  2. Gradually add the cream to the yolk mixture until well combined.

  3. Stir in the oil and vinegar, mixing thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the salad 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 + 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. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 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

Hard-boiled yolks
Bind with the cream and oil to form a smooth, emulsified dressing.
Thick cream
Adds richness and body to the dressing, softening its sharpness.
Salad oil
Adds fat that gives the dressing a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.
Mustard
Acts as an emulsifier that helps hold the oil and cream together.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cream to the yolk mixture. Adding cream slowly lets the yolks absorb it in small amounts, forming a stable, smooth emulsion. Adding it all at once can cause the dressing to separate or look greasy.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, endive, beetroot, cucumber, mustard, 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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