Name: Eggs and Lettuce
Ingredients: 1 head of cabbage lettuce; 2 tablespoons butter; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; Nutmeg to taste; Eggs (as needed)

Why it works: Cabbage and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eggs and Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

Scald the cabbage lettuces in hot water.
Squeeze them well and stew them in a saucepan with butter.
Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
Let them stew for half an hour, then chop them well together.

Assemble and serve

Lay the mixture in a dish.
Fry the eggs in butter and place them on top of 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.

Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together622 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lettuce + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together184 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 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

Cabbage lettuce: Forms the bulk of the dish and, once stewed, becomes soft and moist.
Butter: Enriches the lettuce with fat and carries flavour, and is also used to fry the eggs.
Eggs: Provide the fried topping, adding richness and a set, golden texture over the lettuce.

Swap the cabbage

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

Spinachfits better
Chivefits better
Leekfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, butter, pepper, nutmeg, egg. 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.