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Salad

Salad, Mayonnaise

A lettuce salad topped with mayonnaise, hard‑boiled eggs, pickled gherkins, olives, capers, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salad, Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Clean and dry the lettuces.

  2. Take the small heart of one lettuce and leave it uncut from the stalk.

  3. Stand the heart upright in the middle of the salad.

  4. Arrange the softer parts of the leaves on top to create a smooth surface.

Dress and decorate

  1. Spread a thick layer of Mayonnaise sauce over the heart and the surface of the salad.

  2. Decorate the edge with quartered hard-boiled eggs, slices of pickled gherkins, and stoned olives.

  3. Dry the capers on a cloth and sprinkle them about an inch apart on the white surface.

  4. Finely chop the parsley and sprinkle it over the salad.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + walnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuces
Form the base of the salad, providing crisp leaves and a fresh, moist texture.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds richness and fat, and coats the salad with a smooth, creamy layer.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add soft, rich texture and creamy flavour to the edge of the salad.
Pickled gherkins
Add acidity and a sharp, tangy contrast to the creamy mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Arrange the softer leaves to create a smooth surface. A smooth, even surface lets the thick mayonnaise layer spread evenly without gaps, so the dressing covers the lettuce uniformly and the garnishes sit neatly on top.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, sauce, egg, olive, capers, parsley):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, sauce, egg, olive, capers, parsley. 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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