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Salmon Salad

A salad of canned salmon dressed with a vinaigrette of egg yolks, butter, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Salmon Salad

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Place the can of salmon in a kettle of hot water and boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the salmon from the can and place it in a dish.

  3. Pour off the juice or oil, add a few cloves, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  4. Cover with cold vinegar and let it stand for one day.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, beat the yolks of 2 raw eggs with the mashed yolk of 1 hard-boiled egg.

  2. Gradually add 3 tablespoons of melted butter or salad oil, 1 tablespoon of mustard, and a little salt and pepper.

  3. Add vinegar to taste and beat the mixture well.

  4. Optionally, add lemon juice and a little brown sugar.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cover the salmon thickly with part of the dressing.

  2. Tear the crisp inside leaves of lettuce into small pieces, add to the remaining dressing, and pour over the salmon.

  3. Garnish with crisp lettuce leaves.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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 body of the salad and carries the flavour of the cloves and vinegar.
Raw egg yolks
Emulsify the dressing, binding the butter or oil and mustard into a thick, creamy sauce.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and body to the dressing, thickening it as it is mashed and beaten.
Melted butter or salad oil
Supplies fat for a smooth, rich dressing texture and mouthfeel.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, pungent flavour to the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the butter or oil to the yolks. Fat must be added slowly while beating so the yolks can emulsify it. Adding it too fast makes the dressing split and turn oily instead of thick and creamy.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, clove, pepper, vinegar, egg, butter, mustard):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

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