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Salad

Salade De Laitues Au Lard

A salad of lettuce dressed with salt, pepper, vinegar, and topped with crispy bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salade De Laitues Au Lard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the lettuce with salt, pepper, and vinegar.

  2. Cook the bacon in a skillet until crispy.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the hot bacon over the salad and toss quickly.

  2. Serve immediately.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the crisp leafy base that the warm bacon and vinegar slightly soften.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory, smoky flavor, and its crisp pieces give contrast to the leaves.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the salad and balances the rich bacon fat.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot bacon over the salad. Hot bacon fat and acid wilt lettuce quickly. Tossing briefly and serving immediately keeps the leaves crisp rather than limp.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cabbagefits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar. 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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