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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of lettuce dressed with oil, egg yolk, onion, salt, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,562 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dress the lettuce with salad oil and mix well.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks.

  3. Add the finely chopped onion, salt, and sugar to the egg yolks.

  4. Stir in the vinegar.

  5. Pour the dressing over the lettuce.

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

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

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and vinegar to give the dressing a thick, creamy body.
Salad oil
Coats the lettuce leaves, carrying flavour and adding a smooth richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the sugar.
White sugar
Softens the sharpness of the vinegar and rounds out the dressing's flavour.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg, sugar, 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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