Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Salad

A salad of oysters, veal, celery, lettuce, olives or pickles, shrimps, and mayonnaise, garnished with hard‑boiled eggs and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Oyster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Parboil the oysters in vinegar until the edges curl, then drain and cool.

Assemble the salad

  1. Cut the oysters into small pieces and add them to a bowl with the veal, celery, lettuce, olives or pickles, and shrimps.

  2. Just before serving, add the special salad dressing, paprika, parsley, capers, and salt.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with slices of hard-boiled egg and serve with walnuts and mayonnaise.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  3. Celery + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Oyster + shrimptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together531 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main seafood texture and flavor; parboiling in vinegar firms their edges.
Shrimps
Add a second seafood element with tender, mild flesh and extra bulk.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and moisture, coating the salad with fat and creaminess.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm texture and richness through the egg whites and yolks.
Capers
Contribute sharp, briny acidity that brightens the salad.

The step that matters

Parboil the oysters until the edges curl. Brief heat in vinegar firms the oyster edges and sets their texture. Overcooking makes oysters tough and rubbery, so stop as soon as the edges curl and drain promptly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, oyster, veal, egg, lettuce, olive, shrimp):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, oyster, veal, egg, lettuce, olive, shrimp. 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

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipes