Skip to main content
Salad

Salmon Salad

A salad made with canned salmon, onion, sugar, salt, pepper, vinegar, salad oil, mustard, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Salmon Salad

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the salmon finely.

  2. In a bowl, mix the salt, pepper, mustard, and sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the finely chopped onion, lemon juice, and salad oil to the mixture.

  4. Let the dressing stand for five minutes.

  5. Pour the dressing over the chopped salmon and mix lightly.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 protein of the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar and lemon.
Salad oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the dressing a smoother texture.
Onion
Adds sharp aroma and crunch to the salad.

The step that matters

Let the dressing stand for five minutes. Resting lets the salt, sugar and acids dissolve and blend into the oil and onion, so the flavour is even rather than sharp or grainy. Skipping the rest can leave the dressing unevenly seasoned.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, sugar, pepper, vinegar, mustard, lemon):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, sugar, pepper, vinegar, mustard, lemon. 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 salmon salad recipes

Dressing 4Jellied 3 See all 153 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes