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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A lettuce salad dressed with a mixture of egg yolks, mustard, olive oil or butter, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with salt and mustard until fine.

  2. Add olive oil or melted butter to make a paste.

  3. Gradually mix in the vinegar until well combined.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the lettuce.

  2. Slice the remaining hard-boiled egg and place it on top as a garnish.

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

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

  2. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil or butter and vinegar to form a smooth, thick dressing.
Olive oil or melted butter
Adds fat that makes the yolk paste silky and richer in mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the yolks and fat.
Lettuce
Provides the crisp, fresh base that the dressing coats.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the vinegar. Adding vinegar slowly while mixing lets the yolk and fat emulsify into a smooth dressing; adding it all at once can break the mixture into a thin, separated liquid.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, olive, vinegar. 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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