Name: Salmon Salad
Ingredients: 1 can firm red salmon, skin and bone removed; 1 small head of lettuce; ½ small onion, chopped; 1 medium dill pickle, chopped; 3 tablespoons vinegar; ½ teaspoon mustard; Salt, to taste; Cayenne pepper, to taste

Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the salmon, lettuce, onion, and dill pickle finely.
In a bowl, combine the chopped ingredients with vinegar and mustard, then add salt and cayenne pepper to taste.
Serve the mixture on lettuce leaves.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Dill + mustardtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together560 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Dill + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,630 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + dilltop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together159 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 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

Red salmon: Provides the main body and flaky texture of the salad.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the fish.
Dill pickle: Adds tangy, salty crunch and aromatic flavour to the mixture.
Onion: Adds sharp aromatic flavour that mellows with the other ingredients.

Swap the onion

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

Horseradishfits better
Cucumberfits better
Beetrootfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lettuce, dill, vinegar, mustard, 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.