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Salad

Lettuce Sweet Salad

A salad of lettuce, spring onions, vinegar, sugar, and mint served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Sweet Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lettuce into small pieces.

  2. Slice the white part of the onions, using very little of the green.

  3. Chop the mint.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix all ingredients together.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Lettuce + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy base and bulk of the salad.
Spring onions
Adds a sharp, mild onion aroma and some bite.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that contrasts with the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the salad and softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mint
Adds fresh, aromatic flavor.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, onion, 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.

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