Name: Lettuce Salad
Ingredients: 1 head of cabbage lettuce; 1 hard-boiled egg; 2 tablespoons salad oil; 4 teaspoons tarragon vinegar; 3 teaspoons chopped parsley; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper

Why it works: Lettuce and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Trim, wash, and dry the lettuce thoroughly, then tear it into shreds and place it in a salad bowl.
In a small bowl, combine the salt and pepper with the tarragon vinegar, stirring until the salt is dissolved.

Dress and serve

Pour the vinegar mixture over the lettuce, then add the salad oil and mix well.
Cut the hard-boiled egg into quarters and place it on top of the salad.
Sprinkle the chopped parsley over the salad and serve.

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.

Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together425 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,563 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together622 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage lettuce: Forms the bulk of the salad, providing crisp texture that the dressing coats.
Salad oil: Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Tarragon vinegar: Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.
Hard-boiled egg: Adds protein-rich body and a creamy texture against the crisp leaves.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, egg, tarragon, vinegar, parsley, pepper):

Shallotfits better
Mustardfits better
Beetrootfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg, tarragon, vinegar, parsley, 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.