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Salad

Lettuce and Spanish Onion

A chilled salad of leaf lettuce and shredded Spanish onion dressed with vinegar, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,562 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lettuce and Spanish Onion

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the leaf lettuce well and tear it into bits.

  2. Shred the Spanish onion and combine it with the lettuce.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the vinegar with salt, pepper, and sugar until dissolved.

  2. Ensure all ingredients are ice cold.

  3. Pour the dressing over the lettuce and onion, then toss lightly with a fork and 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.

  1. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 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

Leaf lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy base of the salad.
Spanish onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavor and crunch to the salad.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Keep all ingredients ice cold. Cold lettuce and onion stay crisp, while warm produce wilts quickly. Chilling also mellows the sharpness of the raw onion.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, vinegar, pepper, sugar. 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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