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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of boiled lettuce and onion mixed with spices, gravy, olive oil, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Boil the lettuce leaves and chopped onion in water with nitre for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove from water, squeeze out excess liquid, and chop the lettuce into small pieces.

Season and dress

  1. In a bowl, mix together pepper, alisander, parsley seed, dried mint, and onion.

  2. Combine this mixture with the chopped lettuce.

  3. Add gravy, olive oil, and wine to the salad and mix well.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Coriander + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Coriander + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together940 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce leaves
Forms the body of the salad and absorbs the dressing once chopped and drained.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the salad a smooth mouthfeel.
Wine
Adds acidity and a sharp, tangy note that brightens the greens.
Gravy
Adds savoury, meaty flavour and moisture to the salad.
Onion
Adds a sharp, aromatic flavour that mellows when boiled.

The step that matters

Squeeze out the excess liquid after boiling. Boiled lettuce holds a lot of water. If it is not squeezed well, that water dilutes the seasoning and gravy and makes the salad watery and bland.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, pepper, coriander, parsley, mint, olive, wine):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, pepper, coriander, parsley, mint, olive, wine. 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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