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Lettuce Salad

A lettuce salad with tomatoes, nut butter, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,655 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the tomatoes and heat them in a pot until boiling.

  2. In a bowl, mix a little hot tomato juice with the nut butter until creamy.

  3. Stir the creamy mixture into the boiling tomatoes.

  4. Dissolve the flour in a little cold water and add it to the tomatoes with salt to taste.

  5. Cook the mixture in a double boiler.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot preparation over the lettuce while stirring the leaves with a fork.

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. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  2. Flour + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, liquid and tangy flavour of the sauce.
Nut butter
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the tomato base.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the sauce clings to the lettuce.

The step that matters

Dissolve the flour in cold water before adding it. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch granules swell unevenly. Dissolving it in cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lettuce):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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