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Dutch Lettuce

A lettuce salad with diced ham or bacon, egg, sour cream, vinegar, and hard‑boiled egg garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and pepper 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 ↓

Dutch Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Place the washed lettuce leaves in a deep dish.

  2. Fry the diced ham or bacon until brown.

  3. While the meat is hot, add a little vinegar.

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the egg until light.

  2. Mix the beaten egg into the sour cream.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the hot ham until it thickens.

Assemble and serve

  1. Boil the eggs until hard.

  2. Shell and slice the boiled eggs.

  3. Pour the hot ham mixture over the lettuce.

  4. Top the salad with the sliced hard-boiled eggs.

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

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

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Ham + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham or bacon
Provides savory flavor and fat, which the hot drippings carry into the dressing.
Egg
Thickens the warm mixture as its proteins set when heated, giving a creamy coating.
Sour cream
Adds richness and tang, and softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the fat of the meat.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the hot ham until it thickens. Egg proteins set when heated, so the mixture thickens into a coating. If the heat is too high or stirring is too slow, the egg can scramble into lumps instead of forming a smooth dressing.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, vinegar, egg, cream, 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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