Skip to main content
Salad

Salmon Mayonnaise

A salad of boiled salmon, lettuce, beetroot, hard‑boiled eggs, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Wash and thoroughly dry the lettuces and small salad.

  2. Use the outer leaves sprinkled with oil and vinegar as the base.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Layer the salmon in neat cutlets on top, masking with mayonnaise sauce.

  2. Finely chop the remaining salad and arrange it around the salmon in dark and light groups.

  3. Garnish with slices of hard-boiled egg and beetroot.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  3. Beetroot + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,682 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main protein and flaky texture of the dish.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds richness and moisture, coating the salmon and binding the flavours together.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add creamy texture and mild richness as a garnish.
Oil
Adds fat and mouthfeel, carrying flavour across the outer leaves.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad leaves and balances the richness of the mayonnaise.

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, lettuce, egg, vinegar, pepper, sauce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lettuce, egg, vinegar, pepper, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes