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Salad

Cabbage Lettuce

A salad of cabbage lettuce leaves tossed with optional hard boiled eggs, eschalot, chives, young onions, and garnished with nasturtium flowers, beetroot, radish, and cucumber.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Cabbage Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the leaves

  1. Remove the outer leaves of the cabbage lettuce and discard them.

  2. Take off the remaining leaves one by one and cut them in half.

  3. Soak the leaves in cold water, then drain them using a cloth by shaking it vigorously to remove excess water.

Dress and serve

  1. Place the drained leaves in a bowl and season with salt, pepper, and dressing.

  2. If desired, add quartered hard boiled eggs, eschalot, chives, or young onions.

  3. For garnish, mix in nasturtium flowers, beetroot slices, radish slices, and cucumber slices 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 + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  3. Radish + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Chive + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together261 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy base of the salad and carries the dressing.
Olive oil or dressing of choice
Adds fat and moisture, coating the leaves and carrying seasoning.
Hard boiled eggs
Adds richness and a soft, creamy texture against the crisp leaves.

The step that matters

Drain the leaves thoroughly. Any water left on the leaves dilutes the dressing and makes it slide off, so the salad turns watery. Shaking the leaves dry in a cloth helps the dressing cling.

Swap the chive

The recipe marks chive as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, lettuce, egg, onion, beetroot, radish, cucumber):

  1. Chivethe original
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, lettuce, egg, onion, beetroot, radish, cucumber. 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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