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Salad

Anchovy Salad

A salad of anchovies, lettuce, hard‑boiled eggs, onion, olive oil and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Anchovy Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Shred equal quantities of anchovies and lettuce.

  2. Mix in half the quantity of hard boiled eggs and chopped onion.

  3. Cover with equal parts of olive oil and vinegar, thoroughly mixed.

  4. Serve on leaf lettuce.

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 + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  3. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savoury flavour that is the base of the salad.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and richness that soften the salad's sharpness.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smooth richness that carries the flavours together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts through the fish.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg, olive, vinegar. 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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