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Salad

A salad of lettuce, celery, beets, cabbage, and hard‑boiled eggs dressed with mustard, oil, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the lettuce, celery, beets, and cabbage finely.

Make and combine

  1. In a bowl, mix the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs, mustard, salad oil, sugar, and enough vinegar to moisten.

  2. Combine the dressing with the chopped vegetables.

  3. Slice the whites of the hard-boiled eggs into rings and place them on top of the salad.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + cabbagetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 mustard, oil and vinegar into a smooth dressing.
Salad oil
Adds fat and moisture, coating the vegetables and giving the dressing a rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sugar and fat.
Mustard
Its emulsifiers help hold the oil and vinegar together and add a sharp flavour.
Celery
Provides crisp texture and moisture as the main chopped vegetable base.

The step that matters

Mixing the dressing before combining. Whisking the yolks, mustard, oil and vinegar together first lets the fat emulsify into a smooth dressing. Adding oil and vinegar straight to the vegetables can leave it greasy and unevenly seasoned.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cabbage, egg, mustard, sugar, 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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