Skip to main content
Salad

Lettuce and Onion Salad

A salad of chopped lettuce and onion topped with Roquefort or French dressing, optional stuffed olives, and paprika garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Lettuce and Onion Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select a small, solid head of lettuce and remove enough leaves for salad plates.

  2. Use an onion the size of a teacup.

  3. Chop the remaining lettuce and onion finely.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place a generous spoonful of the chopped mixture on each lettuce leaf.

  2. Top each serving with a generous amount of Roquefort cheese dressing or French dressing.

  3. If desired, place a stuffed olive in the center of the mixture.

  4. Sprinkle with paprika.

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 + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  3. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Roquefort cheese + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  5. Lettuce + roquefort cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28 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

Lettuce
Forms the crisp, cool base that holds the chopped salad mixture.
Onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that contrasts with the dressing.
Roquefort cheese dressing
Adds moisture, richness and tangy flavor to the salad.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, roquefort cheese, olive):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, roquefort cheese, olive. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes