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Salad

Shrimp Salad

A salad of shrimps coated in lemon jelly and French dressing, served on lettuce with mayonnaise.

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

Shrimp Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the shrimps and soak them in French dressing for 2 hours or longer.

  2. Flavor the lemon jelly with vinegar, pepper, and sugar.

Set the molds

  1. Place the shrimps in individual molds and pour enough flavored jelly over them to hold them firmly.

  2. Set the molds aside until the jelly is firm.

Serve

  1. Serve the shrimp on lettuce with mayonnaise.

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

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

  2. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + lettucetop 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. Vinegar + lettucetop 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

Unsweetened lemon jelly
Sets around the shrimp to hold them firmly in the mold.
Shrimps
Provide the main protein and flavor of the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess to contrast the firm jelly.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar and the flavor of the jelly.

The step that matters

Set the molds aside until the jelly is firm. Gelatin sets as it cools, so the jelly must be fully firm before the molds are unmolded or served. Rushing this leaves the shrimp loosely held and the salad soft and difficult to release.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, vinegar, pepper, sugar, shrimp. 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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