Skip to main content
Salad

Lettuce with Cream

A lettuce salad tossed with a peanut butter, sugar, and vanilla dressing served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and peanut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 170 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lettuce with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the lettuce thoroughly and tear the leaves into small pieces.

  2. Place the lettuce in a dish.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, dissolve the peanut butter in the cold water, adding it gradually.

  2. Stir in the sugar and vanilla extract until well combined.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the lettuce and serve cold.

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 + peanuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Peanut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lettuce + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together26 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Tender lettuce
Forms the base of the salad, providing crisp, watery bulk that the dressing coats.
Peanut butter
Gives the dressing its nutty, rich flavour and body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury peanut flavour.
Vanilla extract
Adds a warm, aromatic note to the dressing.

The step that matters

Dissolving the peanut butter in the cold water. Peanut butter is thick and does not mix easily with liquid. Adding the water gradually and stirring well helps it disperse into a smooth dressing rather than forming lumps that cling to the bowl.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peanut, butter, sugar, vanilla):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peanut, butter, sugar, vanilla. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes