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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of lettuce dressed with mustard, ketchup, horseradish, egg yolks, butter, vinegar, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lettuce into bite-sized pieces.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the mustard, ketchup, horseradish, and egg yolks.

  2. Add the butter and vinegar, and mix until smooth.

  3. Chop the egg whites and fold them into the mixture.

Serve

  1. Combine the dressing with the lettuce 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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ketchup + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the base of the salad, providing crisp body and volume.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the dressing, helping the mustard, butter and vinegar blend into a smooth, thick sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the dressing a smooth, creamy texture.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances its richness.
Egg whites
Chopped and folded in, adding light body and texture to the dressing.

The step that matters

Add the butter and vinegar, and mix until smooth. Butter and vinegar must be incorporated gradually into the yolk-based mixture so it emulsifies. Adding them too fast or without thorough mixing can cause the dressing to separate or look greasy.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, ketchup, horseradish, egg, butter, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Radishfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, ketchup, horseradish, egg, butter, 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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