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Shrimp Salad

A salad of tomatoes filled with shrimp mixed in French dressing, topped with mayonnaise and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Shrimp Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Skin the tomatoes, cut off the blossom end, and remove the pulp.

  2. Place the hollowed tomatoes on a bed of crisp lettuce.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the cold boiled shrimps with French dressing and let marinate for 1 hour.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the tomatoes with the shrimp mixture.

  2. Top each filled tomato with a spoonful of mayonnaise and a slice of olive.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  4. Shrimp + olivetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,966 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Tomato + shrimptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,689 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Serve as hollow cups that hold the shrimp filling.
Cold boiled shrimps
Provide the main protein and the body of the salad filling.
French dressing
Flavors the shrimp while it marinates, adding acidity and oil.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and fat to the topping of each tomato.

The step that matters

Marinating the shrimp. The shrimp needs its full hour in the dressing so the acid and oil can season it evenly. Shrimp is already cooked, so it should be kept cold and not overworked, which keeps it tender.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, shrimp, olive):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, shrimp, 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.

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