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Salad

Sweet Eed Pepper and Lettuce Salad

A salad of lettuce and sweet red pepper served with cottage or pimiento cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cottage cheese and cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 126 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Sweet Eed Pepper and Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Combine small leaves of head lettuce and strips of sweet pepper in a bowl.

Make the cheese

  1. Heat fresh clabber slowly until barely hot.

  2. Pour the hot clabber into a cloth bag to drip for 1-2 hours.

  3. Transfer the curd to a bowl.

  4. Season the curd with salt and pepper.

  5. Mix in ½ cup cream.

  6. Finely chop baked and peeled pimientos, or use canned pimientos.

  7. Cream the pimientos and cottage cheese together until smooth.

  8. Roll the cheese into walnut-sized balls.

Serve

  1. Serve the balls with 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. Cottage cheese + cheesetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  3. Cream + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cottage cheese + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Lettuce + cottage cheesetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 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 base of the salad, adding freshness and a light, watery crunch.
Sweet pepper
Adds crisp texture and a mild, sweet, fresh flavour to the salad.
Cottage cheese
Provides the soft, moist, mildly tangy body of the cheese balls.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, moister texture to the curd.
Pimientos
Contribute sweet, mild pepper flavour and colour to the pimiento cheese.

The step that matters

Drip the curd gently and fully. Hot clabber must be heated only until barely warm, because overheating makes the curd tough and grainy. Draining for the full 1-2 hours removes whey, so the cheese holds its shape and is not watery.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cottage cheese, cream, cheese):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cottage cheese, cream, cheese. 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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