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Fish Salad

A chilled salad of fish, celery, eggs, lemon juice, olive oil or mayonnaise, salt, pepper, served on lettuce.

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 ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fish into pieces and chop the eggs.

  2. Mix the fish, celery, and eggs in a bowl.

Dress and chill

  1. Add lemon juice, olive oil (or mayonnaise), salt, and pepper to the mixture.

  2. Set the mixture in a cool place for at least 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve the salad 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.

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

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

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  5. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the salad and carries the flavor.
Hard cooked eggs
Add soft, creamy texture and body to the salad.
Olive oil or mayonnaise
Adds fat, which gives the salad moisture and a richer mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the fat.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch.

The step that matters

Chilling the mixture for at least 1 hour. Resting in a cool place lets the flavors meld and the dressing settle into the fish and eggs. Serving it too soon can leave the salad tasting flat and loose.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lemon, celery, egg, pepper, olive):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lemon, celery, egg, pepper, olive. 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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