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Salad

Salmon Mayonaise

A salad of cooked salmon, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, beetroot, celery, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Salmon Mayonaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash all the vegetables and dry them on a towel without crushing.

  2. Cut the cucumber and beetroot into very thin slices, the celery into slender strips, and the tomato into slices.

  3. Break up the lettuce into small pieces and place it in the bottom of the dish with the cress.

Assemble the salad

  1. Place the slice of salmon in the center and pour the mayonnaise sauce over it to mask it.

  2. Arrange the cucumber and tomato slices alternately around the salmon, placing a small round of beetroot in the center of each cucumber slice.

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. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together345 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 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

Slice of cooked salmon
Provides the central protein and the main flavour of the dish.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and creaminess, coating the salmon and giving moisture to the salad.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy base that holds the other ingredients.
Cucumber
Adds cool, crisp texture and fresh moisture.
Tomato
Adds juiciness and a light acidity that balances the rich mayonnaise.
Beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and a vivid colour contrast.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, sauce, beetroot):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, sauce, beetroot. 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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