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Salad

Dressed Lettuce

A salad of lettuce dressed with a sweet vinegar and sugar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,370 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dressed Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Soak the lettuce in ice water until crisp.

  2. Drain and dry the lettuce thoroughly.

  3. Chop the lettuce into small pieces.

Dress and serve

  1. Combine the vinegar and sugar, then pour over the chopped 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. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lettucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Provides the crisp, watery base that the dressing coats and sits on.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the lettuce thoroughly. Water left on the leaves dilutes the vinegar and sugar mixture, so it slides off and the dressing turns thin and watery instead of clinging to the lettuce.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar. 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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