Name: Salmon Salad
Ingredients: 1 quart cooked salmon; 2 heads of lettuce; 2 tablespoons lemon juice; 1 tablespoon vinegar; 2 tablespoons capers; 1 teaspoon salt; ⅓ teaspoon pepper; 1 cup mayonnaise dressing or French dressing

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

Break up the salmon with two forks.
Add salt, pepper, vinegar, and lemon juice to the salmon.
Chill in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 hours.

Assemble the salad

Prepare the lettuce as you would for lobster salad.
Select whole leaves to border the dish.
Cut or tear the remaining lettuce into pieces and arrange in the center of a flat dish.
Heap the salmon lightly on top and cover with dressing.
Sprinkle capers on top and arrange whole leaves at the base.
Optionally, place a thin slice of lemon on each leaf.

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.

Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,222 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked salmon: Forms the main body of the salad, providing flavor and a flaky texture.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the salmon and balances the richness of the dressing.
Vinegar: Adds sharp acidity that seasons the salmon and sharpens its flavor.
Capers: Add a salty, briny bite that contrasts with the rich salmon and dressing.
Mayonnaise dressing or french dressing: Adds fat and moisture, binding the salmon and coating the salad with richness.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, lettuce, vinegar, capers, pepper):

Avocadofits better
Limefits about as well
Lemonthe original
Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lettuce, vinegar, capers, pepper. 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.