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Salad

Lettuce Salad No. 2

A salad of shredded lettuce topped with hard‑boiled eggs, lemon‑sweet dressing, and optional sliced onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and shred the lettuce.

  2. Boil the eggs until hard, then remove the shells.

  3. Mash the yolks finely.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the lemon juice, water, sugar, salt, and sweet cream to prevent curdling.

  2. Add the mashed yolks to the mixture.

Assemble

  1. Pour the mixture over the lettuce.

  2. Cut the egg whites into rings and arrange the rings on top of the salad.

  3. Optionally, add sliced onions.

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. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Cream and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the bulk and crisp base of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Mashed yolks enrich the dressing, and sliced whites add texture on top.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing to balance the lemon's sharpness.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, and helps keep the dressing smooth.

The step that matters

Mixing the cream into the lemon mixture. The record says the cream is added to prevent curdling. Acid from the lemon juice can cause dairy proteins to clump, so combining the cream with the sugar, water and salt before adding the yolks helps keep the dressing smooth.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, egg, lemon, sugar, cream):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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