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Salad

Salmon and Rice Salad

A salad of salmon, boiled rice, boiled eggs, and a dressing of salt, sugar, flour, mustard, egg, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salmon and Rice Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, combine the salmon, boiled rice, boiled eggs, cayenne pepper, melted butter, parsley, salt, and pepper.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, mix the salt, sugar, flour, mustard, and egg in a double boiler.

  2. Add the walnut-sized butter and cook until thickened.

  3. Thin the dressing with cream as needed.

Combine

  1. Add the dressing to the salad and mix gently.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks and binds it into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Flour
Helps thicken the dressing so it coats the salad rather than running off.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the dressing and the salad.
Boiled rice
Forms the bulk of the salad, giving it body and a neutral base for the other ingredients.
Salmon
Provides the main flavour and protein, flaked through the salad.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing until thickened. The egg and flour must be heated gently in a double boiler; too much heat can scramble the egg and leave lumps, while too little leaves the dressing thin. Thinning with cream only after it thickens keeps it smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, rice, egg, pepper, butter, sugar, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, rice, egg, pepper, butter, sugar, flour. 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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