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Salad

Oyster Salad

A salad of oysters, hard‑boiled eggs, lettuce, olive oil, salt, pepper, and mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lettuce 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 ↓

Oyster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Halve the oysters and season with salt, pepper, and olive oil.

  2. Cut the hard boiled eggs into squares and mix with the oysters.

  3. Finely chop the fresh lettuce.

Assemble

  1. Layer the lettuce and oysters in a serving dish, finishing with a layer of lettuce.

  2. Top with Mayonnaise Dressing.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Oyster + olivetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together709 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main savory body and briny flavor of the salad.
Hard boiled eggs
Add soft, creamy texture and richness to the oyster mixture.
Fresh lettuce
Adds crisp texture and fresh, mild bulk to the layers.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries seasoning and gives the oysters a smooth richness.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture, creaminess, and fat that binds the salad together.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, olive, egg. 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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