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Salad

Scottish Salad

A salad of lettuce, hard‑boiled eggs, celery, flaked salmon, mayonnaise, olives, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Scottish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the platter

  1. Cover a platter with lettuce leaves.

  2. Arrange sliced hard-boiled eggs in a circle around the edge, overlapping the slices.

Make the salad and finish

  1. In the center, mix 2 parts chopped celery with 1 part flaked salmon, oil, vinegar, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Pour mayonnaise dressing over the mixture.

  3. Garnish with stuffed olives and capers.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  5. Celery + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 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

Hard-boiled eggs
Add a firm, mild protein base and a neat sliced presentation around the edge.
Flaked salmon
Provides the main protein and a rich, savoury flavour to the salad.
Chopped celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mildly sharp crunch that contrasts the soft fish.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, binding the salmon and celery into a creamy mixture.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, egg, salmon, vinegar, 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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