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Salmon Salad

Salmon salad with egg yolk dressing, vinegar, mustard, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 boiling water and boil it for 20 minutes.

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

  3. Pour off the juice or oil from the salmon.

  4. Add a few cloves to the salmon and sprinkle it with coarse sea salt and pepper.

  5. Cover the salmon with cold vinegar and let it stand for a day.

  6. Remove the salmon from the vinegar and place it on a platter.

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the raw egg yolks with the mashed hard-boiled yolks in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the mustard, then the melted butter or salad oil, to the egg mixture.

  3. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and vinegar to taste, then beat the dressing well.

  4. Add lemon juice and brown sugar if desired.

Assemble and serve

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

  2. Finely chop the crisp lettuce leaves and mix them with the remaining dressing.

  3. Pour the lettuce mixture over the salmon.

  4. Garnish the salmon with larger pieces of lettuce around it and serve the salmon salad.

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 dish, providing flesh that is firm and flaky after cooking.
Raw egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter or oil and mustard, giving the dressing a thick, smooth body.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and body to the dressing, thickening it as they are mashed in.
Mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds a sharp, tangy flavor to the dressing.
Melted butter or salad oil
Adds fat and richness, and forms the emulsified body of the dressing.
Lettuce
Adds crisp texture and freshness that contrasts with the rich dressing.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the butter or oil to the egg yolks. Fat must be added slowly while beating so it emulsifies into the yolks. Adding it too fast can break the emulsion, leaving the dressing oily and separated.

Swap the lemon

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

  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, mustard, butter. 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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