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Salad

Oyster Salad

A chilled salad of cooked oysters, celery, oil, vinegar, lemon juice, mayonnaise, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Oyster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Put oysters in a pan and cook slightly without adding water.

  2. When they begin to boil, transfer them to a colander to drain.

  3. Place drained oysters in a dish and add oil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  4. Place the dish on ice until very cold.

Prepare the celery

  1. Chop celery finely and place it in a dish with a lump of ice.

Assemble and serve

  1. When ready to serve, drain the water off the celery and mix it with the oysters.

  2. Transfer everything to a salad bowl and pour over the mayonnaise.

  3. Garnish with some celery leaves and serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Celery + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,627 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Form the main body of the salad and carry its briny, savoury flavour.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh, slightly bitter flavour that contrasts with the oysters.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess, binding the salad and softening the seafood flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the mayonnaise.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that cuts through the oysters and oil.

The step that matters

Chilling the oysters until very cold. Oysters spoil quickly and become rubbery when overcooked. Cooling them thoroughly firms the flesh and keeps the salad fresh and safe before the cold celery and mayonnaise are added.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, celery, vinegar, pepper. 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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