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Salad

Dutch Salad

A salad of lettuce, ham, beaten egg, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dutch Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Strip off the outer leaves of the lettuce. Cut the lettuce in half. Wash the lettuce well.

  2. Cut the lettuce into small pieces.

Make the dressing

  1. Fry the slice of ham until done. Remove the ham from the pan.

  2. Pour the beaten egg and vinegar into the hot fat. Set it on the fire. Stir until it thickens.

  3. Cut the ham into 1-inch square pieces.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the egg and vinegar mixture over the lukewarm lettuce. Place the salad in a deep dish. Arrange the ham pieces on top. Let it stand for about five minutes before serving.

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. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Cabbage + hamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together186 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fine cabbage lettuce
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides crisp, fresh leaves that soften slightly under the warm dressing.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavour and some fat from the frying pan.
Beaten egg
Thickens with heat into a creamy, binding dressing that coats the lettuce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the egg and fat.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg and vinegar until it thickens. Heat must be gentle and constant while stirring, because the beaten egg can scramble into lumps if it overheats. Steady stirring lets the egg proteins set smoothly into a uniform dressing.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, ham, egg, 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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