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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A lettuce salad with egg yolks, oil or butter, mustard, sugar, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard 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

Prepare

  1. Pick, wash, and drain the lettuce.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs to a paste.

  2. Add the salad oil or melted butter gradually, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the salt, mustard, pepper, and sugar vigorously.

  4. Gradually pour in the vinegar while stirring.

  5. If there's extra sauce, refrigerate it for up to 3 days.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 or melted butter
Provides fat that gives the dressing a smooth, rich texture.
Prepared mustard
Helps hold the oil and vinegar together as an emulsion and adds sharpness.
White sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang.

The step that matters

Add the oil gradually while mixing well. Adding fat slowly while mixing lets the egg yolk coat tiny oil droplets and form a stable emulsion. Pouring it in too fast can cause the dressing to separate and look greasy.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, mustard, pepper, 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.

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