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Salad

Cheese Salad

A salad of lettuce, onions, tomatoes, hard‑boiled eggs, and cheese, dressed with a mixture of cream, oil, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Layer finely shredded lettuce in a glass dish.

  2. Add young sliced onions and mustard and cress.

  3. Top with a layer of sliced tomatoes and sliced hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Sprinkle a layer of grated cheese on top.

Serve

  1. Serve with a dressing made of equal parts cream, salad oil, and vinegar, mixed with mustard.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Add protein and a firm, creamy texture to the layered salad.
Grated cheese
Adds savory richness and a salty, fatty flavor to the layers.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the dressing, softening the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the fat.
Salad oil
Adds fat that gives the dressing a smooth, coating texture.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, onion, mustard, egg, pepper, cheese, cream):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, onion, mustard, egg, pepper, cheese, cream. 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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