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Salad

Lettuce and Cucumber Salad

A salad of lettuce and cucumber dressed with olive oil, eggs, cream, tarragon vinegar, and French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lettuce and Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the lettuce leaves.

  2. Slice the cucumber thinly.

Make the dressing

  1. Beat together olive oil and eggs until well combined.

  2. Add cream and tarragon vinegar to the mixture and stir.

Assemble and serve

  1. Toss the lettuce with the dressing.

  2. Garnish with cucumber slices drizzled with French dressing.

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 + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  5. Olive + cucumbertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the crisp base of the salad and carries the dressing.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smooth body to the dressing, coating the leaves.
Eggs
Emulsify with the oil so the dressing holds together instead of separating.
Rich cream
Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the vinegar in the dressing.
Tarragon vinegar
Provides acidity and a sharp, aromatic flavour that brightens the salad.
Cucumber
Adds cool, moist crunch and a light fresh flavour.

The step that matters

Beat the oil and eggs until well combined. Oil and egg must be beaten thoroughly so the egg lecithin can emulsify the oil into droplets. If it is under-beaten, the oil separates from the dressing and pools instead of clinging to the leaves.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Lettucethe original
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, egg, cream, tarragon, vinegar, cucumber. 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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