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Salad

Simple Lettuce Salad

A salad of crisp lettuce dressed with salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Simple Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix salt and pepper in a bowl.

  2. Add vinegar and mix well.

  3. Pour in oil and stir until combined.

Dress and serve

  1. Place lettuce leaves in a large bowl.

  2. Pour dressing over lettuce and toss gently.

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. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 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 leaves
Provide the crisp, cold base that the dressing coats and carries.
Oil
Adds fat that coats the leaves and carries flavor across the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Pour in oil and stir until combined. Oil and vinegar do not mix on their own. Stirring breaks the oil into tiny droplets that stay suspended only briefly, so the dressing separates again. Toss it over the lettuce soon after mixing.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cabbagefits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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