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Salad

Shekry's Deessed Lettuce

A lettuce salad dressed with olive oil, vinegar, salt, onion, parsley, and peppers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Shekry's Deessed Lettuce

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Separate leaves from the stalk of the lettuce, discarding wilted outer leaves.

  2. Wash, drain, and dry the leaves.

  3. Arrange the leaves in a salad bowl, maintaining their original shape.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix olive oil, vinegar, salt, onion, parsley, red peppers, and green peppers.

  2. Pour the dressing over the lettuce.

  3. Cover and let stand for one hour in a cool place.

  4. Shake vigorously for five minutes before serving.

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. Parsley + peppertop 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. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  4. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the leafy base that the dressing coats and carries.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smooth body, carrying flavour across the leaves.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Shrewsbury green peppers
Add crisp texture and fresh, grassy flavour to the dressing.
Shrewsbury red peppers
Add sweetness and colour to the dressing.
Bermuda onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows as the dressing stands.

The step that matters

Shake vigorously for five minutes before serving. Oil and vinegar separate on standing, so vigorous shaking emulsifies them into a temporarily cohesive dressing that coats the leaves evenly rather than pooling at the bottom.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, olive, vinegar, parsley, pepper. 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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