Why it works: Lettuce and radish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓
Lettuce Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Wash the inner leaves of the lettuce carefully in cold water.
Lay the washed lettuce on a clean, dry towel to absorb moisture.
Serve the lettuce with French dressing and accompany with radishes.
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.
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Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together58 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lettuce
- Crisp leaves provide the salad's main texture and body.
- French dressing
- Oil and vinegar add fat and acidity, carrying flavor over the leaves.
The step that matters
Drying the lettuce. Water left on the leaves dilutes the dressing and makes it slide off instead of coating the leaves. Thorough drying keeps the dressing clinging and the leaves crisp.
“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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