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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A lettuce salad dressed with a simple egg, olive oil or butter, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the hard-boiled egg finely.

  2. Make a paste by adding olive oil or melted butter.

  3. Mix thoroughly and gradually add vinegar.

Assemble the salad

  1. Pour the dressing over the lettuce.

  2. Slice another egg and garnish over the 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.

  1. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Egg + olivetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,340 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg
Mashed into a paste that thickens and gives the dressing body.
Olive oil or melted butter
Fat that emulsifies with the egg and vinegar, giving the dressing a smooth, rich texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Mix thoroughly and gradually add vinegar. Adding vinegar slowly while mixing lets the fat and mashed egg emulsify into a smooth dressing. Adding it all at once can cause the dressing to separate and turn thin and watery.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, 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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