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Salmon and Salad

A salad of boiled salmon and cauliflower seasoned with parsley, salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salmon and Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Trim the boiled salmon neatly and garnish with parsley.

  2. Boil the cauliflower until two-thirds cooked, then let it cool.

  3. Break the cauliflower into bunches and place them in a dish.

  4. Season the cauliflower with salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + cauliflowertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

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

  4. Cauliflower + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together888 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the bulk of the salad, with a firm texture that holds up after boiling and cooling.
Oil
Adds fat and moisture, coating the cauliflower and carrying flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the richness of the oil.
Boiled salmon
Provides the main protein and a rich, flaky texture.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, parsley, pepper, vinegar. 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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