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Lettuce Au Jus

A boiled lettuce dish served with butter, egg yolk, and milk, seasoned with salt, pepper, carrots, onion, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Lettuce Au Jus

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lettuce

  1. Boil the lettuce in slightly salted water for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the lettuce and cut it open.

  3. Sprinkle the lettuce with salt and pepper.

  4. Add sliced carrots, onion, parsley, and butter to the lettuce.

  5. Cover with water and cook slowly until the carrots are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolk with the milk or cream and add just 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the main body of the dish and softens as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cooking liquid.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce slightly and adds richness when stirred in.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and a smoother, creamier texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and milk or cream. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently but can curdle or scramble if it boils. Adding the mixture just before serving, off the heat or at low heat, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, pepper, carrot, parsley, butter, egg, milk):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, pepper, carrot, parsley, butter, egg, milk. 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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