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Salad

Eggs and Lettuce

A simple salad of shredded lettuce and sliced hard‑boiled eggs seasoned with salt, pepper, sugar, and salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Eggs and Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lettuce into shreds.

  2. Slice the hard boiled eggs.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the lettuce and eggs thoroughly.

  2. Add salt, white pepper, and sugar.

  3. Serve with salad 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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + white peppertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together208 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 most of the salad's bulk.
Hard boiled eggs
Add soft, creamy texture and richness to the crisp lettuce.
Sugar
Adds a light sweetness that balances the savoury seasoning.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg, 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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