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Salad

Anchovy Salad

A salad of anchovy fillets served on lettuce with cucumbers, olives, French dressing, and tartare sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Anchovy Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the anchovies

  1. Soak the anchovies overnight, then drain and dry them by pressing gently in a cloth.

  2. Remove the bones and skin, and roll each half into a fillet.

Assemble and serve

  1. Lay the fillets on a bed of shredded lettuce.

  2. Garnish with sliced cucumbers and cut olives.

  3. Marinate with French dressing.

  4. To make sauce tartare, mix parsley, gherkins, and capers into the mayonnaise.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Norwegian anchovies
Provide the main savoury, salty flavour and the fillets that form the salad.
Thick mayonnaise
Adds richness and fat, forming the base of the sauce tartare.
French dressing
Adds acidity and oil, moistening and seasoning the salad.

The step that matters

Soaking and drying the anchovies. Soaking draws out excess salt, and thorough drying keeps the fillets from making the salad watery or overly salty. Pressing gently preserves their texture.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cucumber, olive, capers. 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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