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Salad

Anchovy Salad

A salad of anchovies, lettuce, parsley, lemon, and French dressing or mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Anchovy Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the anchovies

  1. Wash the anchovies.

  2. Soak them in water for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the bones, heads, fins, and tails from the anchovies.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the anchovies on a dish with the lettuces, chopped parsley, and sliced lemon.

  2. Pour over a simple French dressing or mayonnaise sauce.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide a salty, savoury flavour that is the main character of the salad.
Lettuces
Form the crisp, fresh base that the anchovies and dressing rest on.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the salty fish.
French dressing or mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture that coat the leaves and fish.

The step that matters

Soak the anchovies for 1 hour. Soaking draws salt out of cured anchovies, so the fish tastes less briny. Soaking for too short a time can leave the salad overly salty, while the bones and skin must still be removed carefully after soaking.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, lemon, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, lemon, sauce. 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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