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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of lettuce and hard‑boiled eggs dressed with butter, sugar, mustard, pepper, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs to a powder.

  2. Add sugar, butter, pepper, salt, and mustard to the yolks and let it stand for 5 minutes.

  3. Beat in the vinegar.

Assemble the salad

  1. Cut the lettuce with a knife and fork, then place it in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the dressing by tossing 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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks are mashed into a powder that thickens and enriches the dressing.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that balances the richness and sweetness of the dressing.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.
Prepared mustard
Contributes sharp flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.

The step that matters

Mix in the dressing by tossing with a fork.. Tossing gently coats the lettuce evenly without bruising or tearing the leaves, which would release water and make the salad limp.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, mustard, 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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