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Salad

Oyster Salad

A chilled salad of oysters, veal, shrimp, celery, lettuce, olives, and fruit, dressed with special salad dressing and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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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.

Make the salad

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

  2. Gently mix in the special salad dressing and paprika.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with slices of hard-boiled egg, bananas, oranges, and walnuts.

  2. Serve with mayonnaise on the side.

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 flavor and tender texture once parboiled and chopped.
Special salad dressing
Adds moisture and richness that bind the salad together.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a firm, creamy texture and mild richness as a garnish.
Veal
Adds meaty body and substance to the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess to the dish when served on the side.
Vinegar
Acidity firms the oysters' edges during parboiling and adds tang.

The step that matters

Parboil the oysters until the edges curl. Brief heating in acidic vinegar firms the oyster edges so they hold their shape when chopped. Overcooking makes them tough and rubbery, while underheating leaves them soft and slippery.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, vinegar, 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.

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