Name: Mayonnaise of Salmon
Ingredients: 2 cups cooked salmon; 1 cup mayonnaise; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mayonnaise of Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Flake the cooked salmon into a bowl.
Add mayonnaise and lemon juice, mixing well.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

Serve chilled, garnished as desired.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Salmon + lemontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,918 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Salmon + peppertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,446 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked salmon: Provides the main body and flaky texture of the salad.
Mayonnaise: Binds the flakes together and adds moisture and richness through its fat and emulsion.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.