Skip to main content
Main

Salmon Salad

Salmon salad with egg yolk dressing and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Salmon Salad

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Place the can of salmon in a kettle of boiling water and boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the salmon from the can and place it in a deep dish, then pour off the juice or oil.

  3. Add a few cloves.

  4. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  5. Cover the salmon with cold vinegar and let it sit for a day.

  6. Remove the salmon from the vinegar and place it on a platter.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of 2 raw eggs and the yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs until smooth.

  2. Gradually add 1 tablespoon mustard.

  3. Gradually add 3 tablespoons melted butter or salad oil.

  4. Gradually add salt.

  5. Gradually add pepper.

  6. Gradually add vinegar to taste.

  7. Beat the mixture until thick.

  8. Add lemon juice.

  9. Add brown sugar if desired.

Serve

  1. Spread some dressing over the salmon.

  2. Mix the remaining dressing with torn lettuce leaves.

  3. Pour the lettuce mixture over the salmon and serve.

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.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Raw egg yolks
Add richness and help the dressing emulsify and thicken when beaten.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add a smooth, creamy body to the dressing.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharpness to the dressing.
Melted butter or salad oil
Adds fat and richness, forming the body of the emulsified dressing.
Cold vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the salmon and dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the butter or oil gradually. Fat must be added slowly while beating so it emulsifies into the yolks; adding it all at once can split the dressing and leave it thin and greasy instead of thick.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, clove, pepper, vinegar, egg, mustard, butter):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, clove, pepper, vinegar, egg, mustard, butter. 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.

More salmon salad recipes

Dressing 4Jellied 3 See all 153 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesCanned SalmonCanned Salmon14 recipesSmoked SalmonSmoked Salmon14 recipes