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Salad

Salade De Laitue Au Lard

A lettuce salad tossed with crispy bacon, hot vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Laitue Au Lard

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the lettuce in a salad bowl.

  2. Melt the bacon in a pan until crispy, then pour the melted bacon over the lettuce.

  3. Add hot vinegar, then finish with oil, salt, and pepper.

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. Vinegar + peppertop 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 bulk of the salad and provides crisp, fresh texture.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor, and its rendered fat dresses the leaves.
Hot vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the rich fat.
Oil
Adds fat and smoothness that carries the dressing across the leaves.

The step that matters

Pour the melted bacon over the lettuce while it is hot. Hot bacon fat coats the leaves and slightly wilts them, so the dressing spreads evenly. If the fat cools and sets, it clumps and the salad tastes greasy in patches.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, 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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