Skip to main content
Salad

Lettuce Salad

A salad of white lettuce with hard‑boiled eggs, dressed in oil, vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs to a powder.

  2. Add sugar, pepper, salt, mustard, and oil.

  3. Let it stand for five minutes.

  4. Beat in the vinegar.

Prepare the salad

  1. Cut the lettuce into pieces using a knife and fork.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Mashed yolks thicken the dressing and add richness and body.
Salad oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives the dressing a smooth, coating texture.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the oil and sugar.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Made mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps emulsify the oil into the dressing.

The step that matters

Beat in the vinegar. Adding vinegar after the oil and yolks helps form a smooth emulsion; adding it too fast or too early can cause the dressing to separate and taste uneven.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, mustard, pepper, 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.

More lettuce salad recipes

Cabbage 14French 9Dressing 7Plain 4Tomato 4Dutch 3 See all 145 →

You might also like

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