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Salad

Crayfish Salad

A chilled salad of crayfish, lemon juice, lettuce, sea salt, mayonnaise dressing, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Crayfish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine crayfish and lemon juice in a bowl.

  2. Chill in the refrigerator or on ice until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. Place a lettuce leaf on each plate and top with crayfish.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and drizzle with mayonnaise dressing.

  3. Garnish with finely chopped parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  4. Crayfish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Crayfish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish
Forms the main protein and gives the salad its sweet, delicate meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the crayfish and balances the rich dressing.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess, giving moisture and richness to the salad.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, lemon, parsley. 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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