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Salad

Shrimp Salad

A chilled shrimp salad with celery, egg yolks, egg whites, capers, cream, and a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Shrimp Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shrimp

  1. Combine shrimp, coarse sea salt, and ice water in a bowl and let stand for a while.

  2. Drain shrimp in a colander, then roll shrimp in a cloth.

Make the salad

  1. Mix shrimp with celery, using two parts celery to one part shrimp.

Make the dressing

  1. Slowly stir olive oil into chopped egg yolks until thick and smooth.

  2. Add lemon juice to thin the mixture.

  3. Add heaping teaspoon coarse sea salt, a little red pepper, and drained capers to the dressing.

  4. Whip cream.

  5. Fold whipped cream into dressing.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix sliced egg whites into salad with half of the dressing.

  2. Serve salad with remaining dressing on top.

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. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Shrimp
Forms the main body of the salad and provides its savory flavor.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Emulsify with the olive oil to give the dressing a thick, smooth body.
Cream
Whipped and folded in, it lightens the dressing and adds a softer, richer texture.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh, mild crunch to the salad.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and thins it to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Slowly stir olive oil into the egg yolks. Oil must be added gradually so the yolks can emulsify it; adding it too fast breaks the mixture into a greasy, separated dressing instead of a thick, smooth one.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, egg, olive, lemon, pepper, capers, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, egg, olive, lemon, pepper, capers, cream. 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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