Name: Lettuce Dressing
Ingredients: 2 hard boiled egg yolks; 2 tablespoons sweet cream; 1 teaspoon pepper; 1 teaspoon sugar; 1 teaspoon mustard; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; vinegar to taste; lettuce

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce 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 Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

Rub together the egg yolks, sweet cream, pepper, sugar, mustard, and salt.
Let the mixture stand for five minutes.
Add vinegar to taste.

Serve

Pour the dressing over cold 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.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled egg yolks: Adds richness and helps bind the dressing into a smooth, creamy emulsion.
Sweet cream: Adds fat and body, making the dressing creamy and softening sharp flavors.
Mustard: Helps emulsify the fat and adds a sharp, pungent bite.
Sugar: Balances the sharpness of the mustard and vinegar with mild sweetness.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the rich dressing and cuts through the fat.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar. Acid can thicken or curdle dairy if it goes in too fast or in large amounts, so add it gradually and taste as you go.

Swap the lettuce

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

Horseradishfits better
Capsicumfits about as well
Lettucethe original
Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, pepper, sugar, mustard, 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.