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Salad

Shrimp Salad

A salad of Dunbar shrimps, lettuce, eggs, and a vinaigrette of oil, mustard, salt, sugar, vinegar, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Shrimp Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. In a bowl, smooth the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs to a paste.

  2. Add the beaten egg, oil or drawn butter, mustard, salt, sugar, and vinegar.

  3. Place the bowl in a pan of boiling water, stirring constantly until the mixture is done.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the rinsed shrimps over the shredded lettuce.

  2. Before serving, add the juice of one lemon.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed to a paste, they give the dressing a smooth, rich body.
Beaten egg
Cooked gently over heat, it thickens the dressing as it sets.
Oil or drawn butter
Adds fat, giving the dressing richness and a smooth texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness and sweetness of the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar and lemon.

The step that matters

Stirring the dressing over boiling water. Eggs thicken as they heat, but too much heat scrambles them into lumps. Stirring constantly over gently boiling water, with the bowl not touching the water, keeps the mixture smooth and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, lettuce, egg, butter, mustard, sugar, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, lettuce, egg, butter, mustard, sugar, vinegar. 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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