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Salad

Salads and Salad Making

A simple lettuce salad dressed with vinegar, salt, white pepper, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,370 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salads and Salad Making

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a cup, mix vinegar, salt, and white pepper.

  2. Add oil to the mixture just before serving.

Serve

  1. Coat the lettuce leaves with the dressing.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. White pepper + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes
  4. Lettuce + white peppertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Vinegar + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the crisp leaves that the dressing coats.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the dressing.
Oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives the leaves a light coating.

The step that matters

Add the oil just before serving. Oil and vinegar do not stay mixed for long, so the dressing separates if it sits. Adding the oil at the last moment keeps it evenly combined and stops the lettuce from becoming soggy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, vinegar, cream. 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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