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Lettuce Salad

A salad of lettuce, eggs, tarragon, and garden cress dressed with a mustard‑vinegar oil sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Wash the lettuce if necessary.

  2. Dry the lettuce thoroughly with a cloth.

  3. Break or cut the leaves into convenient pieces using a silver knife.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs, 2 teaspoons of dry mustard, pepper, and salt to taste, along with 1 tablespoon of oil, and mix until smooth.

  2. Gradually add oil and vinegar to create a mayonnaise-like sauce.

  3. Stir in the tarragon, minced eschalot, and diced egg whites.

Toss and serve

  1. Add the lettuce and garden cress.

  2. Mix everything thoroughly using a wooden or bone fork and spoon.

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. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lettuce + garden cresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together15 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

Eggs
Egg yolks bind the oil and vinegar into a stable, creamy, mayonnaise-like sauce.
Oil
Adds fat and smooth body, coating the leaves and carrying the flavour of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Dry mustard
Helps emulsify the yolks and oil and adds a sharp, pungent note.
Tarragon
Contributes its distinctive aniseed-like aroma to the dressing.
Eschalot
Adds a mild, sharp onion-like flavour that lifts the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the oil and vinegar gradually. Oil must be added slowly to the yolk mixture so its droplets are dispersed and emulsified. Adding it too fast makes the sauce split and stay thin and greasy instead of thick and creamy.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tarragon, egg, shallot, vinegar, garden cress, mustard, pepper):

  1. Lettucethe original
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Horseradishfits less well
  4. Beetrootfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, egg, shallot, vinegar, garden cress, mustard, 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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