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Salad

Salmon Salad

Salmon salad is a chilled dish of cooked salmon mixed with lemon juice, vinegar, salt, pepper, mayonnaise dressing, and capers, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Salmon Salad

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Break up the salmon with two forks.

  2. Add salt, pepper, vinegar, and lemon juice to the salmon.

  3. Chill in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 hours.

Assemble the salad

  1. Prepare the lettuce as you would for lobster salad.

  2. Select whole leaves to border the dish.

  3. Cut or tear the remaining lettuce into pieces and arrange in the center of a flat dish.

  4. Heap the salmon lightly on top and cover with dressing.

  5. Sprinkle capers on top and arrange whole leaves at the base.

  6. Optionally, place a thin slice of lemon on each leaf.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked salmon
Forms the main body of the salad, providing protein and flaky texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fish.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the rich salmon.
Capers
Add salty, tangy bursts of flavor against the mild fish.
Mayonnaise dressing or french dressing
Adds moisture and fat, binding the salad and coating the salmon.

The step that matters

Chilling the salmon. Chilling for 2 to 3 hours lets the acid from the lemon juice and vinegar firm and season the flaked fish. Skipping or shortening this leaves the salmon wetter and less well seasoned.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, lettuce, vinegar, capers, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lettuce, vinegar, capers, 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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