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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A lettuce salad dressed with a mixture of hard‑boiled egg yolks, olive oil, mustard, vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs fine.

  2. Add the sugar, salt, mustard, and olive oil to the yolks.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 5 minutes.

  4. Beat in the vinegar.

Assemble the salad

  1. Cut the lettuce with a knife and fork; avoid using a chopper.

  2. Place the lettuce in a dish.

  3. Add the dressing.

  4. Mix by tossing with a silver fork.

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. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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
Their yolks are rubbed fine and form the base of the creamy dressing.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smoothness, helping the dressing coat the lettuce evenly.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the yolks.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the dressing so it holds together.
White sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness to balance the sharp vinegar and mustard.

The step that matters

Beat in the vinegar. Vinegar should be added to the yolk and oil mixture gradually while beating, so the dressing emulsifies and stays smooth rather than separating. Adding it all at once can break the dressing.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, olive, sugar, mustard, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, sugar, mustard, pepper, vinegar. 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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