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Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of shredded cabbage lettuce, hard‑boiled eggs, salad oil, tarragon vinegar, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 the lettuce

  1. Trim, wash, and dry the lettuce thoroughly.

  2. Tear the lettuce into shreds and place it in a salad bowl.

Dress and serve

  1. In a small bowl, combine ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt and ½ teaspoon of black pepper with the tarragon vinegar, stirring until dissolved.

  2. Pour the vinegar mixture over the salad.

  3. Add the salad oil and mix the salad thoroughly.

  4. Cut the hard‑boiled eggs into quarters and place them on top of the salad.

  5. 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.

  1. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  5. 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

Lettuce
Forms the bulk of the salad, providing crisp, shredded body.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and substance as a protein topping.
Salad oil
Coats the leaves, adding fat and a silky mouthfeel to the dressing.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Dissolve the salt in the vinegar before adding oil. Salt dissolves readily in acid but not in oil. Dissolving it in the vinegar first spreads the seasoning evenly, so the dressing tastes consistent instead of gritty or patchy.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. 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.

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