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Lettuce Wilted

A quick dish of lettuce wilted in bacon or ham and vinegar, optionally with onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,562 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lettuce Wilted

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the diced bacon or ham until crisp.

  2. Pour in the vinegar and heat through.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the finely chopped lettuce.

  4. Add onion if desired.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ham + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Ham + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon or ham
Renders fat that carries flavor and adds savory, crisp, browned bits to the dish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps offset the richness of the fat.
Lettuce
Forms the base of the dish, softening as the hot mixture is poured over it.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot mixture over the lettuce. The hot bacon fat and vinegar wilt the leaves almost on contact. If the mixture cools first, the lettuce stays crisp and the dressing will not coat it well.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, vinegar, lettuce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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