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Fish Mayonnaise

A mayonnaise-style dressing made with boiled fish, egg yolks, oil, mustard, sugar, vinegar, and seasonings, served over blanched lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce 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 ↓

Fish Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the fish into 1-inch pieces.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with salad oil until smooth.

  2. Add salt, pepper, mustard, sugar, and vinegar; beat until light.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg white just before serving.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour half the dressing over the fish and spread the remaining dressing on top.

  2. Arrange blanched lettuce leaves around the fish.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil to create a smooth, thick base for the dressing.
Salad oil
Provides fat that gives the dressing its rich, creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Egg white
Folded in whipped form to lighten the dressing and add airy texture.
Mustard
Contributes sharpness and helps stabilize the emulsion.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg white. Folding rather than stirring keeps the air in the beaten egg white, so the dressing stays light. Adding it too early or mixing vigorously lets the air collapse and the dressing turns dense and loose.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, mustard, sugar, 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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