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Salad

Lettuce Salad

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and lettuce 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

Prepare

  1. Wash and cut out all the hard stems from the lettuce.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk until light.

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

  4. Gradually add vinegar to the mixture.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the lettuce 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. Onion + lettucetop 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. Vinegar + lettucetop 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 yolk
Its emulsifying proteins help bind the dressing into a smooth, cohesive mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, tangy flavor.
Onion
Adds a sharp aroma and savory bite to the dressing.
Lettuce
Forms the base of the salad and supplies its crisp texture.

The step that matters

Gradually add vinegar to the mixture. Adding the acid slowly lets it blend evenly into the beaten yolk, so the dressing stays smooth instead of separating or turning unevenly thick.

Swap the onion

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

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

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