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Shad Roe Salad

A salad of boiled shad roe served over lettuce with onion and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,562 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.

  2. Cover with boiling water and add salt.

  3. Cover the saucepan and simmer gently for 20 minutes without boiling.

  4. Carefully lift the roes from the water and let them cool completely.

  5. Remove the outer skin and slice the roe thinly with a silver knife.

Serve

  1. Place a slice of onion in the center of a dish and arrange crisp lettuce leaves around it.

  2. Heap the sliced shad roe in the center and serve with a bowl of mayonnaise dressing.

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. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Roe + lettucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Shad roes
Provides the main body and rich, delicate flavor of the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess, keeping the sliced roe moist and rich.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Shad roe is delicate and rich in egg protein. A rolling boil can toughen the protein and break the roes apart, while gentle simmering cooks them evenly and keeps them tender and intact.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, onion. 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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