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Salad

Lamb and Green Pea Salad

A salad of lettuce, cold roast lamb, peas, and a vinaigrette of oil, vinegar, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and peas match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lamb and Green Pea Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Wash and drain the lettuce leaves, then break them apart and place them in a salad bowl.

  2. Chop the cold roast lamb or other cold meat and spread it over the lettuce.

  3. Pour the cooked and cooled peas on top of the meat.

Dress and serve

  1. Prepare a dressing with oil and vinegar, seasoning with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Pour the dressing over the salad and serve.

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 + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  3. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + peastop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast lamb
Provides the main protein and savoury body of the salad.
Peas
Add sweetness and a tender, soft texture against the meat.
Lettuce leaves
Form the crisp, cool base that holds the other ingredients.
Oil
Carries flavour in the dressing and coats the leaves and meat with fat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the fat.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, lamb, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, lamb, vinegar, pepper. 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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