Name: Fish Salad
Ingredients: 2 cups cooked fish; 1 cup celery; ½ cup French dressing; 1 cup mayonnaise; Lettuce for serving

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Marinate the fish in French dressing.

Assemble and serve

When ready to serve, drain the fish and mix it with celery.
Add the mayonnaise dressing and mix well.
Serve on a bed of lettuce.

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.

Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Fish + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together196 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Fish + celerytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together353 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked fish: Forms the main body of the salad, providing protein and substance.
Celery: Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft fish.
French dressing: Marinates the fish, adding tangy acidity and flavor before mixing.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and creaminess, binding the salad together.