Name: Feuilles De Laitue a L'indienne — Lettuce Leaves
Ingredients: 2 hard-boiled eggs; 12 anchovy fillets; pepper; mayonnaise sauce; crisp lettuce leaves; chopped beets; capers; parsley

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Feuilles De Laitue a L'indienne — Lettuce Leaves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the hard-boiled eggs and anchovy fillets into small squares.
Season with pepper and a little mayonnaise sauce.
Use a round cutter to cut out crisp lettuce leaves about 2½ inches in diameter.

Assemble and serve

Place a teaspoonful of the anchovy salad in each lettuce leaf.
Decorate with chopped beets, capers, and parsley.

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.

Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Provide a firm, creamy body that gives the filling its bulk.
Anchovy fillets: Add a salty, savory flavor that stands out against the mild eggs and lettuce.
Mayonnaise sauce: Binds the chopped eggs and anchovies together and adds richness and moisture.
Crisp lettuce leaves: Act as a cool, crunchy cup that holds the salad and adds freshness.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, anchovy, pepper, sauce, capers, parsley):

Shallotfits better
Chivefits about as well
Mustardfits about as well
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, anchovy, pepper, sauce, capers, parsley. 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.