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Shrimp Salad

A salad of boiled shrimp, celery, and a cider vinegar mustard dressing, served on lettuce with egg rings and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Shrimp Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Line a glass dish with crisp lettuce leaves.

  2. In a bowl, mix together the prepared shrimps, chopped celery, and salt.

  3. Place the shrimp mixture among the lettuce leaves.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, combine the cider vinegar, mustard, sugar, and mashed yolk of the hard-boiled egg.

  2. Bring the dressing to a boil, then let it cool.

Garnish and serve

  1. Cut the white of the hard-boiled egg into rings and place an olive in each ring.

  2. Arrange the egg rings around the salad.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  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

Prepared shrimps
Provide the main protein and the bulk of the salad.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, tangy flavour.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Mashed into the dressing, it adds richness and body.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and aroma to the dressing.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, mild flavour to the shrimp mixture.

The step that matters

Bringing the dressing to a boil. Boiling the vinegar mixture with the mashed yolk helps it thicken slightly and cook the egg yolk, while the vinegar's sharpness is softened by the gentle heat. Letting it cool before use keeps the shrimp from becoming warm and wilted.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, shrimp, cider, vinegar, mustard, sugar, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, shrimp, cider, vinegar, mustard, sugar, egg. 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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