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Salad

Shrimp Salad

A chilled salad of shrimp, lemon jelly, lettuce, and mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,559 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Shrimp Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and set

  1. Cut the shrimps in half and place them in molds.

  2. Pour the unsweetened lemon jelly over the shrimps and season well.

Serve

  1. Turn the mixture out onto lettuce leaves.

  2. Top with 2 small shrimps and drizzle with mayonnaise dressing.

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. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  2. Shrimp + lettucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Shrimp + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimps
Provide the main protein and the bulk of the salad's flavour.
Lemon jelly (unsweetened)
Sets around the shrimps to hold the mould together and adds a light acidic tang.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds richness and fat that moistens the salad and balances the lemon.

The step that matters

Pour the lemon jelly over the shrimps and season well. The jelly must be liquid enough to flow around the shrimps but not hot enough to cook them further. Seasoning is applied before setting, so the salt is evenly distributed through the set jelly rather than sitting only on the surface.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, lettuce. 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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