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Salad

Salmon Salad

A salad made with canned salmon, celery, walnuts, dressing, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Salmon Salad

Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Salmon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove dark places from the salmon and flake it finely.

  2. Chop the celery and walnuts.

Mix and serve

  1. Mix the chopped celery, walnuts, and salmon with salad dressing.

  2. Serve a spoonful of the mixture on a lettuce leaf on small plates.

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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Salmon + walnuttop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Salmon + lettucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together487 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main protein and flavor of the salad, flaked so it blends evenly with the other ingredients.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, crunchy contrast to the soft salmon.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty, slightly rich flavor to the mixture.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture and binds the salmon, celery, and walnuts together.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, walnut, lettuce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, walnut, lettuce. 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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