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Salad

Game Salad

A salad of diced game meat and celery dressed with vinegar, salt, pepper, and mayonnaise, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Game Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dice the lean pieces of game finely.

  2. Add an equal quantity of diced celery.

  3. Mix well with a little vinegar, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

Assemble and serve

  1. Line a salad bowl with lettuce leaves.

  2. Add the game and celery mixture to the bowl.

  3. Garnish with celery tops and serve.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean game
Provides the main protein and meaty texture of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch that contrasts the game.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the game.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, vinegar, pepper. 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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