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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of lettuce, boiled egg, and beetroot dressed with mustard vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Dip the lettuce in water, shake off excess, and wipe the leaves.

  2. Cut the lettuce into strips.

Make the dressing

  1. Remove the yolk from the hard boiled egg and mash it on a plate.

  2. Add salt and mustard to the yolk and mix well.

  3. Stir in the vinegar, then stir in the salad oil.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the lettuce strips in a bowl.

  2. Do not mix the sauce with the lettuce until 10-15 minutes before serving.

  3. Pour the sauce over the lettuce and stir with a fork.

  4. Chop the egg whites and slice the boiled beetroot to garnish the top.

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. Beetroot + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + beetroottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled egg
The mashed yolk forms a thick, creamy base that emulsifies the dressing.
Made mustard
Adds sharpness and helps bind the oil and vinegar into a smoother dressing.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.
Salad oil
Adds fat and smoothness, giving the dressing body and coating the lettuce.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp base that the dressing clings to.

The step that matters

Holding the sauce until serving. Dressing lettuce too early lets the acid and salt draw water out of the leaves, so they wilt and turn limp. Waiting 10-15 minutes before serving keeps the leaves crisp.

Swap the beetroot

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Beetrootthe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, 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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