Skip to main content
Salad

Salmon Salad

A chilled salad of canned salmon mixed with lemon juice, vinegar, mayonnaise, and lettuce.

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

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 ↓

Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Break up the salmon with two forks.

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

  3. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare the lettuce by picking enough leaves to border the dish.

  2. Tear the remaining leaves into pieces and arrange them in the center of a flat dish.

  3. Heap the salmon mixture on top of the lettuce pieces.

  4. Arrange the whole leaves around the edge as a border.

  5. Place a slice of lemon on each leaf.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 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

Canned salmon
Forms the main body of the salad and carries the flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the salmon and balances the richness.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that sharpens the flavour of the salmon.
Mayonnaise or other salad dressing
Adds fat and moisture that binds the salmon and keeps it creamy.
Lettuce
Provides a crisp base and border that holds the salad and adds freshness.

The step that matters

Refrigerate for 2-3 hours. Chilling lets the acid from the lemon juice and vinegar mellow and season the salmon evenly, and firms the dressed mixture so it holds its shape when heaped on the lettuce.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lemon, vinegar, 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.

More salmon salad recipes

Dressing 4Jellied 3 See all 153 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes