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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of lettuce dressed with mustard, pepper, melted butter, vinegar, and egg yolks, garnished with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Cut the lettuce and sprinkle with salt. Let it stand for 30 minutes.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the powdered yolks of the hard-boiled eggs, mustard, and pepper. Add the melted butter and mix well.

  2. Heat the vinegar and pour it over the lettuce.

Toss and serve

  1. Mix everything together and garnish with the chopped 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.

  1. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the base of the salad and carries the dressing.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks are mashed into the dressing, adding richness and body.
Melted butter
Adds fat and smooth richness to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps bind the yolk and butter mixture.

The step that matters

Pouring the heated vinegar over the lettuce. Hot vinegar wilts the leaves quickly and softens them, while cold vinegar would leave them crisp. Pour it on just before tossing so the lettuce does not go limp and soggy before serving.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

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

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