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Salad

Cabbage Lettuce

A salad of cabbage lettuce with optional hard boiled eggs, eschalot, chives, and garnishes of nasturtium, beetroot, radish, and cucumber.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Cabbage Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outer leaves of the cabbage lettuce and discard them.

  2. Separate the remaining leaves, cut them in half, and place them in a pan with cold water.

  3. Drain the leaves using a cloth, shaking it to remove excess water.

Dress and garnish

  1. Place the drained leaves in a bowl and season with salt, pepper, and dressing.

  2. If desired, add quartered hard boiled eggs, eschalot, chives, or young onions.

  3. For garnish, mix in nasturtium flowers, beetroot, radish slices, and cucumber slices.

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 + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  3. Radish + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Chive + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together261 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 salad and provides its crisp, leafy texture.
Olive oil or dressing of choice
Adds fat and moisture, carrying seasoning across the leaves.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and protein-like body to the salad.

The step that matters

Drain the leaves thoroughly. Leftover water dilutes the dressing and makes it slide off the leaves, so the salad turns watery and loses seasoning. Shaking the leaves dry in a cloth before dressing keeps the dressing clinging and the leaves crisp.

Swap the chive

The recipe marks chive as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, lettuce, egg, beetroot, radish, cucumber, pepper):

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Chivethe original
  4. Cauliflowerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, lettuce, egg, beetroot, radish, cucumber, 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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