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Salad

Italian Salad

A cold pasta salad with shrimp, peas, pimento, onion, eggs, mayonnaise, lettuce, parsley, and olive.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Italian Salad

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break spaghetti or macaroni into 1/4-inch pieces.

  2. Boil in salted water until tender, then drain and rinse in cold water.

Assemble and serve

  1. Drain again and add the peas, pimento, onion, shrimp, and hard boiled eggs.

  2. Moisten the mixture with mayonnaise.

  3. Serve on a bed of lettuce, sprinkle with parsley, and top with an olive.

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. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 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

Spaghetti or macaroni
Forms the bulk of the salad and gives a tender, chewy texture.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture and richness that coats the pasta and binds the mixture.
Hard boiled eggs
Add creamy richness and body to the salad.
Shrimp
Adds savory flavor and protein to the salad.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, shrimp, egg, lettuce, parsley, olive):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, shrimp, egg, lettuce, parsley, olive. 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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