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Salad

Simple Lettuce Salad

A salad of crisp lettuce dressed with a vinaigrette of salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Simple Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix salt and pepper in a large spoon with vinegar.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mixing bowl.

  3. Fill the spoon three times with oil and stir until combined.

Dress the salad

  1. Lightly pick apart the lettuce leaves and place them in an empty bowl.

  2. Pour the dressing over the lettuce and toss gently with a salad fork and spoon.

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. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce leaves
Provide the crisp, cold base and most of the salad's bulk and texture.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavor of the oil and seasonings.
Oil
Adds fat and a smooth mouthfeel, and carries flavor across the leaves.

The step that matters

Toss the lettuce gently. Lettuce leaves bruise and wilt under heavy handling, and oil-based dressing coats best when the leaves stay crisp and intact. Gentle tossing spreads the dressing without tearing or crushing them.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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