Skip to main content
Salad

Salmon Salad

A salad of salmon, pickles, cabbage, eggs, and butter crackers dressed with a mustard‑flour‑butter vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Salmon Salad

Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove bones from the salmon and mash it well.

  2. Chop the pickles, cabbage, and hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Crush the butter crackers finely.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, mix flour, sugar, mustard, and butter.

  2. Add vinegar and stir well.

  3. Heat the mixture until it boils, stirring constantly.

Assemble

  1. Pour the dressing over the salad ingredients and mix well.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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.

  1. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main body and flavour of the salad.
Flour
Thickens the dressing as it heats, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the salad.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing.

The step that matters

Heating the dressing until it boils. Flour must be heated to boiling while stirring constantly so its starch swells and thickens the dressing evenly. Without enough heat or stirring, the dressing stays thin or turns lumpy.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, egg, flour, sugar, mustard, walnut):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, egg, flour, sugar, mustard, walnut. 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.

More salmon salad recipes

Dressing 4Jellied 3 See all 153 →

You might also like

Cabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipes