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Salad

Salads and Sandwiches

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Salads and Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Remove the stalk from the lettuce and discard the outer leaves.

  2. Tear the lettuce into pieces with your fingers.

  3. Wash the lettuce leaves gently and dry them using a clean cloth.

  4. Let the leaves dry for 1-2 hours before dressing.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, combine olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Toss the dried lettuce with the dressing just before serving.

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 + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  3. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  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

Crisp lettuce
Forms the body of the salad and provides its crunchy texture.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, coating the leaves and carrying flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Dry the lettuce thoroughly before dressing. Water on the leaves dilutes the dressing and makes it slide off, while dry leaves hold the oil and vinegar and stay crisp.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, vinegar, 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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