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Salad

Oyster Salad

A chilled salad of oysters, salmon, sardines, mustard, sugar, butter, vinegar, and milk, seasoned with salt, pepper, celery seed, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Oyster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wipe the oysters dry and chop them very fine.

  2. In a bowl, combine the oysters, salmon, sardines, mustard, sugar, butter, vinegar, and milk.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and celery seed.

  4. Slice the lemon and lay the slices on top before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + salmontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together672 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main seafood body and flavor of the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the rich fish.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the mixture for a creamier texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, salmon, sugar, butter, vinegar, milk, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, salmon, sugar, butter, vinegar, milk, 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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