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Salmon Salad

Salmon salad with hard‑boiled eggs, raw egg yolks, mustard, butter, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Salmon Salad

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

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

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

  3. Add a few cloves, sprinkle with salt and pepper, cover with cold vinegar, and let it sit for a day.

  4. After a day, remove the salmon from the vinegar and place it in a salad dish.

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with a spoon.

  2. Add the raw egg yolks one at a time, beating for 2 minutes after each addition.

  3. Gradually mix in the mustard, melted butter or salad oil, salt, pepper, and vinegar or lemon juice to taste.

  4. Beat the dressing well and pour it over the salmon.

Garnish

  1. Garnish with sprigs of celery.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Bind the dressing into a smooth, thick emulsion when beaten in.
Hard-boiled eggs
Mashed yolks add body and a creamy texture to the dressing.
Made mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion of the dressing.
Melted butter or salad oil
Supplies fat that gives the dressing richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Salmon
Main protein, firmed by boiling and then softened and flavoured by the vinegar soak.

The step that matters

Adding the raw egg yolks and fat. Raw yolks must be beaten in one at a time and the fat added gradually so the mixture forms a stable emulsion instead of splitting into oil and liquid.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, pepper, vinegar, egg, mustard, butter, celery):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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