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Salad

Wilted Lettuce

Wilted lettuce salad with ham, vinegar, and hard‑boiled egg slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,370 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Wilted Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Place the washed lettuce in a vegetable dish.

  2. Cut across the lettuce four or five times and sprinkle with salt.

Make the dressing

  1. Fry the fat ham until brown.

  2. Cut the fried ham into small pieces.

  3. When the ham is very hot, add the vinegar.

  4. Pour the boiling hot vinegar over the lettuce.

  5. Mix well with a fork.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with slices of hard-boiled eggs.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  3. Ham + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  4. Lettuce + hamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the leafy base, which softens and wilts when hot vinegar is poured over it.
Fat ham
Renders fat and browned flavour that carries through the warm dressing.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and, while hot, helps wilt the lettuce leaves.
Hard-boiled eggs
Adds richness and a mild, savoury contrast as a garnish.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling hot vinegar over the lettuce. The vinegar must be very hot when poured so it wilts the leaves quickly and evenly; cooler vinegar leaves the lettuce crisp and raw-tasting.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, vinegar, egg. 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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