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Salmon Salad Jellied

A chilled salmon salad set in gelatin, served on lettuce with olives and cucumber sauce or mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salmon Salad Jellied

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Drain the canned salmon and remove the skin and bones.

  2. Mince the salmon finely.

  3. Add lemon juice, red pepper, minced parsley, and salt to the salmon and mix well.

Set the jelly

  1. Dissolve the powdered gelatin in ¼ cup of water and bind it with the salmon mixture.

  2. Fill small molds with the mixture and chill on ice until set.

Serve

  1. Turn out the jellied salmon on crisp lettuce leaves.

  2. Garnish with sliced olives and serve with cucumber sauce or 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 + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main body and flaky meaty texture of the salad.
Powdered gelatin
Sets the mixture into a firm jelly that holds its shape when turned out.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fish.

The step that matters

Dissolve the powdered gelatin in ¼ cup of water and bind it with the salmon mixture.. Gelatin must be fully dissolved before mixing, or it will form lumps and set unevenly. The mixture then needs to chill until firm so the molds hold their shape when turned out.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, pepper, parsley, gelatin, lettuce, olive, cucumber):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper, parsley, gelatin, lettuce, olive, cucumber. 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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