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Salad

Oyster Salad

A chilled salad of oysters, eggs, pickles, crackers, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 34,122 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Oyster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the oysters, egg yolks, and pickles finely.

Make the salad

  1. Crush the soda crackers and add them with the oyster liquor, vinegar, and sugar to the chopped mixture.

  2. If the vinegar is very sour, add more sugar.

Garnish and serve

  1. Pass the egg whites through a meat grinder.

  2. Use the ground egg whites and parsley to garnish the salad.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and texture of the salad.
Soda crackers
Absorb liquid and bind the chopped mixture together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor of the salad.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Sweet pickles
Add sweetness and a crisp, tangy bite.

Flavor stand-ins for the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, egg, butter, pepper, vinegar, sugar, parsley):

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Chestnutabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Sesameabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Beansabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, egg, butter, pepper, vinegar, sugar, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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