Skip to main content
Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of lettuce dressed with oil, egg yolks, onion, salt, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,562 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dress the lettuce and mix it well with salad oil.

  2. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. Add the finely chopped onion, salt, and sugar to the egg yolks and stir well.

  2. Pour in the vinegar and mix thoroughly.

  3. Pour the dressing over the lettuce.

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

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

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  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
Emulsify the oil and vinegar, giving the dressing a thick, creamy body.
Salad oil
Adds fat and smooth mouthfeel, carrying flavor across the leaves.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the sugar and richness of the yolks.
White sugar
Sweetness that rounds out the acidity of the vinegar.
Lettuce
Provides the crisp, watery base that the dressing coats.

The step that matters

Stir the onion, salt and sugar into the yolks before adding vinegar. Dissolving the sugar and salt in the yolks first gives an even, well-seasoned base. Adding vinegar too early or without stirring can leave the dressing uneven and grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg, sugar, 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.

More lettuce salad recipes

Cabbage 14French 9Dressing 7Plain 4Tomato 4Dutch 3 See all 145 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes