Skip to main content
Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of lettuce topped with French dressing, optional onion or capers, and cheese balls dusted with paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Wash the lettuce thoroughly and remove any damaged leaves.

  2. Chill the lettuce until very cold.

Make the cheese balls

  1. Form Philadelphia cheese into small balls and dust with paprika.

Serve

  1. Drizzle with French dressing before serving.

  2. For variation, add finely shaved onion or a few capers.

  3. Serve the cheese balls on top of 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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Onion + cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together614 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the crisp, cold base of the salad, giving bulk and a fresh crunch.
French dressing
Adds moisture and acidity that lightly coat the leaves and add flavour.
Philadelphia cheese
Adds rich, creamy texture and fat that contrast with the crisp lettuce.

The step that matters

Chill the lettuce until very cold. Cold leaves stay crisp and firm, while warm or wilted leaves lose turgor and go limp, so the lettuce should be fully chilled before dressing and serving.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, capers, cheese):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, capers, cheese. 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