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Salad

Tender Lettuce

A lettuce salad dressed with a cream, vinegar, sugar, and salt dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Tender Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the lettuce.

  2. Tear the lettuce into bite-sized pieces.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, combine cream, vinegar, sugar, and salt.

  2. Pour the dressing over the lettuce and toss gently.

  3. Serve cold.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Cream + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Lettuce + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides crisp, leafy texture.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the dressing a smooth, creamy coating.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing over the lettuce and toss gently. Cream dressing can separate or turn watery if overworked, and gentle tossing keeps the lettuce leaves intact and evenly coated rather than bruised and soggy.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, vinegar, 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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