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Salad

Port Royal Salmon Salad

A chilled salad of celery, hard‑boiled eggs, salmon, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Port Royal Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the white parts of the celery finely.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped celery, salt, pepper, mustard, and hard-boiled eggs.

Mix and serve

  1. Add the drained salmon and mix gently.

  2. Pour the sour vinegar over the mixture and stir lightly.

  3. Transfer to a serving dish and garnish with celery tops and sliced hard-boiled eggs.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Salmon
Provides the main body and flaky texture of the salad.
Sour vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the salad its sharp, tangy flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the mixture.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, mild vegetal flavour.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the eggs and salmon.

The step that matters

Stir lightly after adding the sour vinegar. Vigorous stirring breaks up the salmon and eggs into a mash and bruises the celery, so it loses its crunch. Gentle folding keeps the pieces intact and the texture pleasantly firm.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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

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