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Shad Roe Salad

A salad of shad roe, tomatoes, watercress, and French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Shad Roe Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the roe

  1. Soak the roe in cold water for about 5 minutes.

  2. Add the roe to boiling water with salt, onion, bay leaf, mixed spice, and lemon juice.

  3. Simmer for about 15 minutes, adding cold water gradually to avoid breaking the roe.

  4. Add a piece of ice to the water and let it chill thoroughly.

  5. Cut the chilled roe into dice.

Prepare and serve

  1. Prepare the tomatoes by cutting off the stem end and scooping out the seeds and pulp.

  2. Chill the tomatoes until ready to serve.

  3. Fill the tomatoes with the diced roe and pour over French dressing.

  4. Serve on a bed of watercress.

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. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + watercresstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together533 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Tomato + watercresstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together158 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Shad roe (in the method)
Forms the main body of the salad, giving it a firm, flaky texture once cooked and diced.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the roe and balances the dressing.
Medium-sized tomatoes
Act as edible cups that hold the diced roe and add moisture and freshness.
French dressing
Adds fat and acidity that moisten the roe and bring the salad together.

The step that matters

Simmering the roe gently. Adding cold water gradually keeps the simmer gentle, because a hard boil toughens and breaks the delicate roe membrane and makes the eggs firm and crumbly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, tomato, watercress):

  1. Kalefits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, tomato, watercress. 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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