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Salad

Pepper Salad

A salad of boiled sweet peppers, onions, and lettuce dressed with French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,655 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pepper Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Plunge the green and red peppers in boiling water for a few minutes.

  2. Remove the peppers and rub off the skin.

  3. Once cool, cut off the stems and remove the seeds.

  4. Slice the peppers and onions into rings.

Dress and serve

  1. Cover the sliced vegetables with French dressing.

  2. Serve on a bed of lettuce, adding tomato slices if desired.

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 + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 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

Sweet peppers
Provide the main body and crisp-tender texture of the salad once blanched and sliced.
Onions
Add a sharp, aromatic bite that contrasts with the sweet peppers.
French dressing
Adds moisture and acidity that flavours the sliced vegetables.

The step that matters

Plunge the peppers in boiling water for a few minutes. Brief blanching loosens the skin so it rubs off easily, while the flesh stays crisp. Leaving them in too long softens the peppers and makes them limp in the salad.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, lettuce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, 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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