Name: Lettuce Dressing
Ingredients: 3 eggs; 2 tablespoons melted butter or sweet oil; 2 teaspoons prepared mustard; dash of pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt; lettuce, finely chopped; vinegar, to taste; sugar, to taste

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lettuce Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

Boil the eggs for 10 minutes, then place them in cold water for 1 minute.
Peel the eggs, cut, and mash them finely.
Mix the mashed eggs with melted butter or oil, mustard, pepper, and salt.

Prepare the lettuce

Cut the lettuce finely and pour vinegar over it, sprinkling sugar to taste.

Combine

Combine the prepared egg mixture with the lettuce.

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.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Provide the creamy body that binds the dressing together.
Melted butter or sweet oil: Adds richness and a smooth, fluid texture to the egg mixture.
Prepared mustard: Adds sharp flavor and helps emulsify the fat into the egg.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.

Swap the lettuce

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

Horseradishfits better
Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits about as well
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, mustard, pepper, 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.