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Salad

Dutch Salad

A salad of lettuce dressed with ham, onion, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and lettuce 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 ↓

Dutch Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lettuce leaves and soak them in cold water.

  2. Cook the ham and onion in a pan for three minutes.

Make the dressing

  1. Add vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar, and two tablespoons of cold water to the pan.

  2. Drain and shake the lettuce, then place it in a bowl.

  3. Pour the hot dressing over the lettuce and serve immediately.

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. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 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

Ham
Adds savory flavour and fat to the warm dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Onion
Adds aromatic sharpness that mellows as it cooks in the pan.

The step that matters

Pour the hot dressing over the lettuce and serve immediately. The dressing must be hot when poured so the lettuce softens slightly and absorbs flavour. Lettuce left sitting in the dressing loses its crispness and becomes limp, so serving right away keeps the contrast between warm dressing and crisp leaves.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, vinegar, sugar, pepper, lettuce. 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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