Skip to main content
Main

Shrimp Salad

A salad of boiled asparagus tips, boiled shrimps, capers, French mustard, mayonnaise dressing, served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Capers and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Shrimp Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut boiled asparagus tips into short pieces.

  2. Add an equal quantity of boiled shrimps, picked and cut up.

Dress and serve

  1. Mix in some capers and a little French mustard.

  2. Thoroughly combine with mayonnaise dressing.

  3. Serve on lettuce leaves.

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. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  3. Capers + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Asparagus + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

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

  5. Asparagus + caperstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled shrimps
Provide the main protein and substance of the salad.
Boiled asparagus tips
Add tender texture and a fresh, vegetal bite.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, binding the salad and coating its pieces.
French mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts the richness of the mayonnaise.
Capers
Add briny, acidic bursts of flavour that brighten the dish.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, capers, mustard, lettuce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, capers, mustard, 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.

More shrimp salad recipes

Avocado 5 See all 90 →

You might also like

Asparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesCream of AsparagusCream of Asparagus38 recipesBoiled AsparagusBoiled Asparagus27 recipes