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Spanish Salad

A gelatin-based salad with lemon, sugar, salt, and finely chopped celery, cabbage, green pepper, and cucumber.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Spanish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. In boiling water, add salt, sugar, and lemon juice, bringing it to a boil.

  3. Add a small amount of green vegetable coloring, remove from heat, and stir in the gelatine until well combined.

  4. When partially cool, add the chopped vegetables.

Decorate and set

  1. Wet a mold with cold water and cut pimentos into long, narrow strips.

  2. Dip the pimento strips in the dissolved gelatine and use them to decorate the mold.

  3. Pour the salad mixture into the mold and chill.

  4. For best results, let it stand for 24 hours before serving on lettuce with mayonnaise.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable salad that holds its shape when unmolded.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet gelatine and balances its flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the gelatine base and offsets the acidity of the lemon juice.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, savoury flavour to the set gelatine.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and bulk, keeping texture in the set salad.
Green pepper
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the gelatine in off the heat and add the vegetables only when partly cool. Gelatine must be fully dissolved and the mixture not too hot before adding it, or it may set unevenly. Adding vegetables too early in warm liquid can cause them to sink or soften.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, celery, cabbage, 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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