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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of lettuce and hard‑boiled eggs dressed with oil, mustard, sugar, vinegar, 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

Prepare

  1. Pick, wash, and drain the lettuce.

  2. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs into a paste.

Make the dressing

  1. Add the salad oil or melted butter a few drops at a time.

  2. Mix in the salt, mustard, pepper, and sugar.

  3. Stir vigorously, then gradually pour in the vinegar.

  4. If there's extra sauce, refrigerate it for up to 3 days.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into a paste, they help emulsify the oil and vinegar into a smooth dressing.
Salad oil or melted butter
Adds fat that gives the dressing a rich, smooth body.
Mustard
Its compounds help bind oil and vinegar and add a sharp flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sugar and fat.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Adding the oil a few drops at a time. Oil added slowly to the yolk paste is dispersed into tiny droplets, forming a stable emulsion. Adding it too fast lets the oil separate, leaving the dressing greasy and broken.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, mustard, pepper, 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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