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Salad

Lettuce, Dutch Style

A lettuce salad with bacon, sour cream, vinegar, and egg, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lettuce, Dutch Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Separate the leaves of the lettuce.

  2. Wash the leaves thoroughly.

  3. Tear the large leaves into several pieces.

Make the dressing

  1. Cut the bacon into half-inch blocks.

  2. Sauté the bacon until pale brown.

  3. Add the sour cream.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Thicken the mixture with the beaten egg.

  6. Stir in the vinegar.

  7. Add pepper to taste.

  8. Pour the hot dressing over the lettuce. Mix thoroughly.

  9. Serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  5. Ham + vinegartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

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 that the warm dressing wilts slightly.
Sour cream
Provides creamy body and a tangy richness to the dressing.
Bacon or ham
Adds salty, savory fat that flavors the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the rich dressing.
Egg
Thickens the hot dressing as it cooks, giving it body.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with the beaten egg. Egg proteins set when heated, so the dressing thickens only if it is hot enough. Adding the egg to a mixture that is too cool leaves it thin, while overheating can scramble it into lumps. Stir steadily while adding it.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, ham, vinegar, egg, 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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