Name: Lettuce Salad
Ingredients: 2 bunches of lettuce; 2 hard-boiled egg yolks; 3 tablespoons melted butter; 1 tablespoon mustard; ½ tablespoon prepared horseradish; 1 pint vinegar; 2 hard-boiled egg whites for garnish

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the lettuce into fine pieces.
In a bowl, mix the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with melted butter, mustard, horseradish, and vinegar.
Pour the dressing over the lettuce and mix well.
Garnish with the sliced egg whites.

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.

Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together79 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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.
Hard-boiled egg yolks: Emulsify with the butter and mustard to give the dressing a creamy body.
Melted butter: Adds richness and a smooth, coating texture to the dressing.
Mustard: Adds sharp flavor and helps bind the dressing.
Vinegar: Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the fat.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, mustard, horseradish, vinegar):

Shallotfits better
Radishfits better
Chivefits better
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, mustard, horseradish, vinegar. 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.