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Salad

Anchovy Salad

A salad of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, parsley, and anchovies dressed with Hygia Salad Dressing and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Anchovy Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the anchovies for 20 to 30 minutes, then wash and clean them, removing bones, fins, heads, and tails.

  2. Cover the bottom of a platter with tender lettuce leaves.

  3. Chop the tomatoes, onions, cabbage, and parsley into small bits and mound them on the platter.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour some Hygia Salad Dressing over the mound.

  2. Top the mound with the prepared anchovies.

  3. Garnish with quartered lemon and serve.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + cabbagetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  5. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 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

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savoury flavour that is the centrepiece of the salad.
Tender lettuce
Forms a crisp, fresh base that holds the chopped vegetables.
Fresh tomatoes
Add juiciness and mild acidity to the mound of chopped vegetables.
Young onions
Add sharp, aromatic bite to the vegetable mound.
Hygia salad dressing
Adds moisture and seasoning that coats the chopped vegetables.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that balances the salty anchovies.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, tomato, cabbage, parsley, lemon):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, tomato, cabbage, parsley, lemon. 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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