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Salad

Plain Lettuce Salad

A simple salad of lettuce dressed with vinegar, oil, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Plain Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Wash the lettuce carefully and dry it well by shaking it in a clean cloth.

  2. Ensure all leaves are completely dry, then break them into small pieces by hand.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the vinegar, oil, sugar, salt, and pepper until dissolved.

  2. Pour the dressing over the lettuce and mix gently.

  3. Serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the bulk of the salad and carries the dressing.
Salad oil
Adds fat and smooth mouthfeel that coats the leaves and carries flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Moist sugar
Adds a little sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Dry the lettuce completely. Water on the leaves dilutes the dressing and stops it clinging, so the salad turns watery and loses flavor. Oil and vinegar cannot coat wet leaves well, so drying thoroughly before dressing matters.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cabbagefits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, pepper. 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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