Skip to main content
Main

Shrimp Salad

A chilled salad of peeled shrimp mixed with mayonnaise, lemon juice, salt, pepper, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Shrimp Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the peeled and deveined shrimp in a bowl.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the mayonnaise with lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

  3. Gently fold the mayonnaise mixture into the shrimp until well coated.

  4. Serve the shrimp salad on a bed of 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.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. 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

Shrimp
Provides the main protein and the firm, tender bite of the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds moisture and richness, binding the dressing to the shrimp.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness of the mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Gently fold the mayonnaise mixture into the shrimp. Cooked shrimp has a delicate texture that toughens and breaks apart under vigorous stirring. Gentle folding coats each piece evenly while keeping the shrimp tender and intact.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, lemon, pepper. 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.

More shrimp salad recipes

Avocado 5 See all 90 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCreamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes