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Salad

Crab Salad

A salad of shredded crab, lettuce, watercress, tomato, pickled beetroot, and hard‑boiled egg, dressed with oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Crab Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the crab shell and shred it finely.

  2. Wash and dry the lettuce, then break or cut it into small pieces.

  3. Wash and pick the watercress, breaking it into small pieces.

  4. Slice the tomato thinly.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the salad oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add the lettuce, watercress, and stir lightly until mixed.

  3. Fold in the crab meat and mix well.

  4. Garnish with slices of beetroot, tomato, and the hard-boiled egg, which should be rubbed through a wire sieve.

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. Watercress + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Crab
Provides the main protein and flesh that gives the salad its substance.
Hard-boiled egg
Rubbed through a sieve, it adds a soft, rich garnish and creamy texture.
Salad oil
Carries fat and flavour into the dressing and coats the leaves.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp, watery base that gives the salad its fresh texture.

The step that matters

Dress the leaves lightly. Stirring the lettuce and watercress gently keeps them from bruising and wilting. Dressing just before serving preserves their crispness, since the acid and salt in the dressing draw water out of delicate leaves over time.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, egg, vinegar, lettuce, watercress, beetroot, pepper):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, egg, vinegar, lettuce, watercress, beetroot, 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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