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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of lettuce mixed with mashed boiled eggs, dressing, vinegar, and salt.

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 ↓

Lettuce Salad

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lettuce and set it on ice until the leaves are crisp.

Make and combine

  1. Mash the boiled eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Add salad dressing, a little vinegar, and salt to the eggs.

  3. Chop the lettuce and mix it well with the egg mixture.

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. Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Provides the crisp, fresh leafy base of the salad.
Boiled eggs
Provide body and richness, forming the creamy base that coats the lettuce.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture and flavour, binding the mashed eggs together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich egg mixture.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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