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Salad

Polish Salad

A chilled salad of diced lobster, shredded cold fish, apple, tomato, lime, cucumber, and mayonnaise, garnished with cucumber, onion, olives, capers, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Polish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lobster meat into dice and mix with an equal quantity of shredded cold fish.

  2. Season and moisten with a little lemon juice and sherry.

  3. Rub a salad bowl with the cut onion.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the lobster and fish mixture, apple slices, tomato slices, lime slices, and cucumber slices in neat layers in the bowl.

  2. Cover with mayonnaise sauce.

  3. Garnish the top with cucumber slices, onion rings, turned olives, capers, and lobster coral.

  4. Sprinkle with cayenne pepper and serve.

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. Lemon + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + limetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,878 recipes

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

  3. Sherry + appletop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  5. Meat + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the salad, providing sweet, tender texture and flavour.
Cold fish
Adds bulk and flaky texture alongside the lobster in the layered salad.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds richness and moisture, binding the layers and coating the top.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the seafood and balances the rich mayonnaise.
Apple
Adds crisp texture and mild sweetness between the seafood layers.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, fish, lemon, sherry, tomato, lime):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, fish, lemon, sherry, tomato, lime. 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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