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Salad

A Salmon Salad

A salad of salmon with cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, hard-boiled eggs, and a sauce of egg yolks, lemon, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the salad

  1. Garnish the salmon with cucumbers, tomatoes, and lettuce. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and paprika.

  2. Add a few drops of chili vinegar and slices of hard-boiled egg.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, red pepper, nutmeg, butter, and water. Stir over low heat until the sauce thickens.

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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Forms the main protein base of the salad.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with butter and thicken the sauce as they gently cook.
Butter
Adds richness and body, helping the sauce become smooth and glossy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich yolks and butter.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm texture and mild richness to the salad.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over low heat. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Gentle, low heat with constant stirring lets the proteins thicken the sauce smoothly while the butter emulsifies into it.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, cucumber, lettuce, pepper, vinegar, egg, 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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