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Salad

Salmon Salad

Salmon salad made with cooked salmon, lettuce, lemon juice, vinegar, capers, mayonnaise dressing, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Salmon Salad

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Break the salmon into pieces using a fork.

  2. Add salt, pepper, vinegar, and lemon juice to the salmon.

  3. Chill in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 hours.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare the lettuce as you would for lobster salad.

  2. Heap the salmon mixture lightly on the lettuce.

  3. Cover with mayonnaise dressing.

  4. Sprinkle capers and quartered lemon slices on top.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked salmon
Forms the main body of the salad and provides its flavor and texture.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, giving the salad a rich, creamy coating.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the mayonnaise.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that seasons the salmon and sharpens its flavor.
Capers
Add a briny, sharp accent that contrasts with the rich salmon and dressing.

The step that matters

Chill in the refrigerator for 2 to 3 hours. Chilling firms the flesh and lets the acid from the lemon juice and vinegar season the salmon evenly. Skipping or shortening this rest leaves the flavors sharp on the surface and the salmon softer and less cohesive when heaped.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lettuce, vinegar, capers, 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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