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Salad

Shrimp Salad

A salad of shrimp mixed with French dressing, mayonnaise, lettuce or celery, capers or olives, and cooked eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Shrimp Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shrimp

  1. Remove the shrimps from their shells, reserving the most perfect ones for garnishing, and break the others into pieces.

  2. Marinate the shrimp pieces with French dressing.

Assemble the salad

  1. When ready to serve, drain the shrimp and mix with shredded lettuce or finely cut celery and mayonnaise.

  2. Shape the mixture into a mound on a bed of lettuce leaves and cover with mayonnaise.

  3. Use capers or finely chopped olives to create five or six designs on the mound; a scroll effect is attractive.

  4. Fill in the designs with shrimp and the rest of the mound with capers, sifted yolks, or chopped whites of cooked eggs.

  5. Alternatively, fill the designs with capers or eggs and the rest of the mound with shrimp.

  6. Finish with a tuft of lettuce on top.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shrimp + caperstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Shrimp + lettucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Capers + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Shrimp + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimps
Provide the main protein and the bulk of the salad's texture and flavour.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and moisture, binding the salad and coating the mound.
French dressing
Marinates the shrimp, seasoning it and adding acidity before assembly.
Shredded lettuce or celery, cut fine
Adds crisp texture and freshness that contrasts with the soft shrimp.
Cooked eggs (yolks and whites)
Adds creamy yolk and firm white for contrast in colour and texture in the designs.

The step that matters

Drain the shrimp before mixing with mayonnaise. Excess liquid from the marinade thins the mayonnaise and makes the mound loose and watery, so it will not hold its shape or designs well.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, capers, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, capers, egg. 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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