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Salad

Pink Salad

A gelatin-based salad made with tomato juice, white stock, and mayonnaise, served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and cranberry share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Pink Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Strain the tomato juice.

  2. Mix the tomato juice with the white stock.

  3. Thicken the mixture with gelatin until it reaches a desired consistency.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into molds and refrigerate until hardened.

  2. Serve the salad on white lettuce leaves.

  3. Color the mayonnaise with a little cranberry juice 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. Lettuce + cranberrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + cranberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Tomato + vealtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Gelatin + lettucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together128 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

Tomato juice
Provides the base liquid and the pink-red colour and tangy flavour of the salad.
White stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid body to the base mixture.
Gelatin
Sets the liquid mixture so it holds its shape when chilled in molds.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and fat, giving a creamy contrast to the set mixture.
Cranberry juice
Colours the mayonnaise pink for a decorative finish.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with gelatin. Gelatin must be fully dissolved and evenly mixed before setting. Undissolved or unevenly distributed gelatin can leave lumps or weak patches, and the mixture needs enough chilling time to firm up properly.

Swap the cranberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, veal, gelatin, lettuce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Cranberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, veal, gelatin, lettuce. 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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