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Salad

Salad for Lettuce

A lettuce salad dressed with a mixture of egg yolk, mustard, vinegar, olive oil, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Salad for Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the yolk of the hard boiled egg finely.

  2. Mix in salt, mustard, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Add vinegar and olive oil (or melted butter) and mix well.

  4. Stir in sugar, spring onions, and the chopped egg white.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over fresh, crisp lettuce and stir gently to avoid bruising.

  2. Serve immediately.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and vinegar, giving the dressing a smooth, creamy body.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps hold the oil and vinegar together in the dressing.
Olive oil or melted butter
Provides fat that carries flavour and gives the dressing a rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the fat.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp base that the dressing clings to.

The step that matters

Stir gently when dressing the lettuce. Lettuce leaves bruise and wilt easily under pressure or heavy mixing. Folding gently keeps them crisp, and serving right away preserves that texture before the dressing softens the leaves.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, pepper, vinegar, olive, sugar, lettuce. 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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