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Lettuce Salad

A lettuce salad dressed with a paste of egg yolks, salt, mustard, olive oil or butter, and vinegar, garnished with a sliced hard‑boiled egg.

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 2 teaspoons of olive oil or melted butter to make a paste.

  3. Gradually mix in 1 cup of vinegar until well combined.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the lettuce.

  2. Slice the remaining hard-boiled egg and place it on top of the lettuce 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
Their fat and emulsifying lecithin help bind the mashed yolks with oil or butter into a smooth paste.
Olive oil or melted butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the paste hold together and coat the lettuce.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, tangy flavour.
Lettuce
Forms the bulk of the salad, providing crisp texture for the dressing to coat.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar gradually. Pouring in the vinegar slowly while mixing lets the yolk and oil emulsion absorb it evenly. Adding it all at once can break the paste so the dressing separates and turns watery.

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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