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Salad

Real Spanish Salad

A salad of lettuce and onions dressed with fresh dressing and olive oil.

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 ↓

Real Spanish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the young lettuce leaves into small pieces and place them in a bowl.

  2. Trim the young onions, including the tops, and cut them into small pieces.

  3. Add the onions to the bowl with the lettuce.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour fresh dressing and a generous amount of olive oil over the salad.

  2. Let the salad stand for 10 minutes before serving.

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. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  3. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 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

Young lettuce leaves
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides its crisp, fresh texture.
Young onions
Adds a sharp, aromatic bite that contrasts with the mild lettuce.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and lightly coats the leaves.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, olive. 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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