Skip to main content
Main

Shad-roe Salad

A salad of boiled shad roes with mayonnaise or mustard dressing and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce 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 ↓

Shad-roe Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the roe

  1. Wash the shad-roes and place them in a saucepan with salt and boiling water to cover.

  2. Boil gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove and drain.

  4. Set aside to cool.

  5. Once cooled, cut the shad-roes into dice.

Prepare the dressing

  1. Prepare the Mayonnaise by rubbing the bottom and sides of a plate with the cut side of an onion.

  2. Refrigerate until needed.

Assemble and serve

  1. Crisp the lettuce as per your preferred method.

  2. Arrange the diced shad-roes in a salad bowl.

  3. Cover with dressing.

  4. Arrange the lettuce in a circle around it.

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

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

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Roe + oniontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Roe + mustardtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Shad-roes
Provide the main protein, with a firm, flaky texture once gently poached and diced.
Mayonnaise or mustard dressing
Adds fat and moisture, coating the diced roe and carrying flavour through the salad.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 20 minutes. A gentle simmer cooks the delicate roe evenly and keeps it tender. A hard, rolling boil can toughen the membrane and break up the roe, so the pieces stay intact when diced.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, 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.

You might also like

Creamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes