Skip to main content
Main

Avocado, Citrus and Rock Shrimp Salad

A chilled shrimp salad with avocado, citrus segments, bell pepper, green onion, cilantro, and a lemon dressing.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shrimp and avocado work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 277 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: wheat, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the dressing and shrimp

  1. Whisk together lemon juice, sugar, hot sauce, garlic, and 2 teaspoons salt. Whisk in oil; reserve.

  2. Stir 2 tablespoons salt, cayenne pepper, and bay leaves into 1½ gallons water. Bring to a boil; simmer 5 minutes.

  3. Add the shrimp. Cook shrimp until just pink and opaque, about 1 minute.

  4. Spread shrimp on a sheet pan to cool. Do not refresh in cold water; the peeled rock shrimp will absorb water quickly. Chill.

Make the shrimp salad

  1. Toss shrimp with 1¾ cups reserved lemon dressing. Fold in bell pepper, onion, and cilantro. Add more salt to taste, if necessary.

Plate and serve

  1. Mound ¾ cup shrimp salad on one side of the plate.

  2. Slice ½ avocado thinly. With a spatula, put it opposite shrimp, almost touching; press lightly to fan it out lengthwise toward the shrimp.

  3. Arrange 5 orange and 5 grapefruit segments on either side of the avocado and shrimp salad.

  4. Drizzle the plate with 1 tablespoon reserved dressing. Garnish plate with tortilla strips.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Shrimp + avocadotop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together277 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Garlic + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together23,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Olive + avocadotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,376 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

Rock shrimp
Provides the main protein, and cooks quickly to stay tender when kept just pink and opaque.
Olive oil
Adds fat and body to the dressing, carrying flavor and giving the salad a smooth mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sugar and oil.
Avocado
Contributes creamy richness and fat that softens the acidity of the citrus.
Grapefruit sections
Adds bright acidity and bitterness that contrast with the rich avocado and shrimp.
Orange sections
Adds sweetness and juiciness that balance the sharp citrus and hot sauce.

The step that matters

Cool the shrimp without rinsing. Rock shrimp absorb water quickly, so rinsing them in cold water would dilute their flavor and make the salad watery. Spreading them on a sheet pan lets the heat escape while they stay dry.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, sauce, garlic, olive, pepper, shrimp, onion):

  1. Avocadoabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Limeabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Mangoabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sauce, garlic, olive, pepper, shrimp, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Lemon SauceIllustrationLemon Sauce236 recipesIllustration of Tomato SoupIllustrationTomato Soup526 recipesIllustration of Brown BreadIllustrationBrown Bread461 recipesIllustration of Mutton BrothIllustrationMutton Broth292 recipes