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Salad

Lettuce with Oil

A lettuce salad dressed with a mixture of egg yolks, olive oil, sugar, mustard, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 with Oil

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the egg yolks with olive oil for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in sugar, mustard, and salt.

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Wash the lettuce heads and open them up.

Dress the lettuce

  1. Pour the mixture over the lettuce.

  2. Chop the lettuce finely and pour the mixture over it.

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. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsifiers that bind the oil into a thick, smooth sauce.
Olive oil
Adds fat, richness and body to the sauce.
Mustard
Helps hold the oil and yolk emulsion together and adds sharp flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the mustard.

The step that matters

Rubbing the yolks with oil for 10 minutes. Yolks and oil must be worked together long enough to form a smooth, thick emulsion. If the mixture is under-worked, the oil can separate and the sauce will look greasy and thin.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Lettucethe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Broccolifits about as well

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