Name: Shrimp Salad
Ingredients: 1 can of shrimp; crisp lettuce leaves; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Shrimp and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 430 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Shrimp Salad

Ingredients

1 can of shrimp
crisp lettuce leaves
mayonnaise dressing

Directions

Prepare

Open the can of shrimp a few hours before serving and drain.
Chill the shrimp on ice until needed.
Line a salad bowl or platter with crisp lettuce leaves.

Assemble and serve

Place the shrimp on the lettuce and drizzle with mayonnaise dressing, or serve the dressing on the side.

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.

Shrimp + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together430 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

Shrimp: Provides the main protein and the bulk of the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds richness and moisture, coating the shrimp with fat and flavour.
Crisp lettuce leaves: Provides a cool, crunchy base that contrasts with the soft shrimp.

“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.