Name: Salmon Salad
Ingredients: fresh salmon or canned salmon; salt; lemon; finely chopped parsley; cucumbers; Mayonnaise Dressing; French Dressing

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

If using fresh salmon, cut it from the tail into 2-inch thick slices, tie in cheesecloth, and cook in salted, acidulated water for 15 minutes.
Drain and chill the salmon, then separate it into flakes with a silver fork, or leave it whole and marinate with French Dressing.
Cut cucumbers into ¼-inch cubes and arrange them around the salmon on a chilled serving platter.
Mask the fish with Mayonnaise Dressing and garnish with lemon slices sprinkled with finely chopped parsley and sprigs of parsley.
If using canned salmon, drain it, remove the skin and bones, and arrange it on a chilled serving platter, garnishing as with fresh salmon.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,564 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,067 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Salmon + cucumbertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together513 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Salmon + lemontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,918 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).