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Salad

Wilted Lettuce

A simple dish of wilted lettuce dressed with vinegar and topped with hard‑boiled egg slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Wilted Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Carefully pick and wash each leaf of lettuce.

  2. Cut the lettuce in the dish four or five times.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour boiling vinegar over the lettuce. Mix well with a fork.

  2. Garnish with slices of hard-boiled eggs.

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. Vinegar + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Vinegar and egg 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
Forms the base of the dish, and heat from the vinegar softens its leaves.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and sharp flavour, and its heat wilts the lettuce leaves.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and mild flavour as a garnish.

The step that matters

Pour boiling vinegar over the lettuce. The vinegar must be hot enough to soften the leaves quickly. If it is not hot, the lettuce stays crisp and does not wilt evenly.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg. 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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