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Salmon and Salad

A salad of boiled salmon served with cauliflower, seasoned with olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salmon and Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the cauliflower until two-thirds cooked, then let it cool.

  2. Break the cauliflower into bunches and place them in a dish.

Season and serve

  1. Season the cauliflower with salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar.

  2. Trim the boiled salmon neatly and garnish with parsley.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + cauliflowertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

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

  5. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the bulk of the salad and carries the dressing.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, coating the cauliflower and carrying flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the oil.
Boiled salmon
Provides the main protein and flavour, served alongside the cauliflower.

The step that matters

Boil the cauliflower until two-thirds cooked. Stopping before it is fully soft keeps the florets firm enough to hold their shape in the salad. Fully cooked cauliflower turns mushy and absorbs dressing unevenly.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, parsley, pepper, olive, vinegar. 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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