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Salad

Pimento Salad

A gelatin-based salad with celery, cabbage, pimento, and green pepper, served with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pimento Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin base

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water and dissolve it in boiling water.

  2. Add sugar, vinegar, lemon juice, and salt to the mixture.

  3. Strain and cool until it begins to thicken.

Set and serve

  1. Stir in celery, cabbage, pimento, and green pepper.

  2. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until set.

  3. Serve with thick mayonnaise dressing.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Celery + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable gel that holds the vegetables in place.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and bulk that stays firm inside the set gelatin.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, mildly savoury note to the salad.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture until it just begins to thicken before adding the vegetables. Gelatine sets as it cools. If the mixture is still very warm, the vegetables may sink or float; if it has set too far, they will not distribute evenly and the layers may not blend.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, lemon, celery, pepper):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, lemon, celery, 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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