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Salad

Anchovy Salad

A salad of anchovies, lettuce, onions, parsley, and lemon, dressed with lemon juice and salad oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Anchovy Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the anchovies in water, then remove the bones, insides, heads, fins, and tails.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the anchovies on a dish with the chopped lettuce, young onions, chopped parsley, and sliced lemon.

  2. Pour the juice of 1 lemon mixed with salad oil over the salad.

  3. 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savoury flavour that is the centre of this salad.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy base that holds the other ingredients.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the oil.
Salad oil
Adds fat and richness, and carries the lemon flavour across the leaves.

The step that matters

Serve immediately. Lettuce wilts and loses its crispness once dressed with acid and oil, so the salad should be eaten soon after it is dressed.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, parsley, lemon. 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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