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Lettuce Sandwiches

A simple sandwich with buttered bread, mayonnaise or vinegar dressing, shredded lettuce, salt, pepper, and garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lettuce Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut thin slices of bread.

  2. Butter one side of each slice.

  3. Spread a thin layer of Mayonnaise or vinegar dressing on the buttered side.

Assemble and serve

  1. Wash, trim, drain, and shred the lettuce leaves.

  2. Place the shredded lettuce on the slices of bread.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  4. Sandwich the slices together.

  5. Cut into convenient sizes and serve, garnished with parsley or tiny lettuce leaves.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the structure that holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and creates a barrier that keeps bread from soaking up moisture.
Mayonnaise or vinegar dressing
Adds moisture and tang, and helps flavour the bread.
Crisp lettuce leaves
Supplies crunch and fresh moisture to the sandwich.

The step that matters

Drain the lettuce well. Excess water from washed lettuce soaks into the bread and makes the sandwich soggy. Draining and shredding the leaves before layering keeps the bread firm and the filling crisp.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, vinegar, pepper, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, vinegar, pepper, parsley. 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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