Name: Lettuce Salad
Ingredients: 1 head of cabbage lettuce; 1 hard-boiled egg; 2 tablespoons of salad oil; 1 tablespoon of tarragon vinegar; 1 teaspoon of chopped parsley; ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon of black pepper

Why it works: Lettuce and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

1 head of cabbage lettuce
1 hard-boiled egg
2 tablespoons of salad oil
1 tablespoon of tarragon vinegar
1 teaspoon of chopped parsley
½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt
¼ teaspoon of black pepper

Directions

Prepare the salad

Trim, wash, and dry the lettuce thoroughly.
Tear the lettuce into shreds and place it in a salad bowl.

Make the dressing

In a small bowl, combine the salt and pepper.
Fill the bowl with tarragon vinegar. Stir until the salt is dissolved.
Pour the vinegar mixture over the salad. Add the salad oil. Mix well.

Garnish and serve

Cut the hard-boiled egg into quarters. Place the egg quarters on top of the salad.
Sprinkle with chopped parsley. Serve.

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.

Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together425 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,563 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together622 recipes

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

Cabbage lettuce: Forms the bulk of the salad, providing crisp leaves that hold the dressing.
Salad oil: Adds fat and carries flavour, coating the leaves and mellowing the vinegar's sharpness.
Tarragon vinegar: Provides acidity and a sharp, aromatic tang that balances the oil.
Hard-boiled egg: Adds richness and protein-based body as a topping.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, egg, tarragon, vinegar, parsley, pepper):

Shallotfits better
Mustardfits better
Beetrootfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg, tarragon, vinegar, parsley, 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.