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 ↓
Italian Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the cut-up fowl with mustard, cress, and chopped lettuce.
In a bowl, combine vinegar, salad oil, salt, mustard, hard boiled egg yolks, and raw egg yolk; mix smoothly.
Add tarragon vinegar to the mixture and pour it over the salad.
Garnish with the whites of the eggs arranged in small heaps with grated smoked beef.
Cut the hard boiled eggs into small pieces and mix them with the salad.
For presentation, pile the fowl in the center, pour the salad mixture over it, and create a wall of dressed salad around it, topping with egg whites cut into rings.
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.
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Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,356 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together425 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together901 recipes
Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
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Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,547 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together14,067 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the lettuce
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, vinegar, egg, tarragon, beef):
- Shallotfits better
- Horseradishfits about as well
- Chivefits about as well
- Lettucethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, vinegar, egg, tarragon, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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