The food lab better home cooking through science ( PDFDrive ) 956

I’d always been under the impression (and I’m not the
only one) that a dressed salad eventually wilts because the
acid in the vinegar attacks the leaves.To test this theory, I
dressed ½ ounce of fresh salad greens with 1 teaspoon
distilled white vinegar (5% acetic acid), another ½ ounce
with plain water (as a control), and a third ½ ounce with
olive oil, then let the leaves sit at room temperature for 10
minutes.

Oil-dressedgreens.


Vinegar-dressedgreens.
Surprise!Turns out that vinegar was not the culprit after
all. The greens dressed with plain oil wilted significantly
faster than those dressed with vinegar. In fact, the vinegarcoatedgreensfaredprettymuchjustaswellasthosedressed
withwater!
The truth is that salad greens, like any leaf, spend their
time exposed to the elements, and as such, need to be able
toprotectthemselvesfromtherain.Theydothisviaathin,
waxy cuticle: it’s like a little built-in raincoat. But, this oily
cuticle makes it very easy for the olive oil to penetrate the
spacesbetweencells,causingdamagetotheleaf.It’stheoil,
not the vinegar, that causes greens to wilt (a fact that can
actuallybeusedtoouradvantageswithcertaintoughgreens
like kale—see Marinated Kale Salads,here). So, to prevent