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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of lettuce dressed with a vinaigrette of egg yolks, mustard, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add salt and mustard to taste, then mix in 2 teaspoons of olive oil or melted butter.

  3. Gradually add 1 cup of vinegar to the mixture, stirring until well combined.

Assemble and serve

  1. Wash and prepare the lettuce leaves, then place them in a serving dish.

  2. Pour the dressing over the lettuce and toss gently.

  3. Slice the additional hard-boiled egg and arrange it on top as a garnish.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their fat and emulsifying lecithin help bind the mashed yolks into a smooth, creamy dressing.
Olive oil or melted butter
Adds fat that gives the dressing body and a rounder, richer mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that balances the rich yolk and fat and brightens the flavour.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion of oil, yolk and vinegar.

The step that matters

Gradually add the vinegar. Adding vinegar slowly while stirring lets the yolk and fat form a stable, smooth emulsion. Adding it all at once can cause the dressing to separate or turn thin and watery.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, olive, 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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