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Salad

Fish Salads

A dressing for fish salads made with egg yolks, oil, vinegar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine egg yolks, salt, pepper, sugar, onions, and parsley in a medium bowl.

  2. Slowly drizzle in the oil while stirring with a wooden spoon until the mixture thickens.

  3. Gradually add the vinegar until you have enough dressing for your salad.

  4. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.

Cook the fish

  1. Melt butter in a sauté pan, add the fillets, season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, and sauté on low heat until cooked.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar, giving the dressing its thick, creamy body.
Oil
Forms the fat base of the emulsion, adding richness and smooth texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the rich yolk and oil.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the pan, helping the fish brown lightly and stay moist.

The step that matters

Drizzle the oil slowly while stirring. Egg yolks can only hold oil droplets when it is added gradually. Pouring too fast breaks the emulsion, so the dressing stays thin and separates instead of thickening.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, sugar, parsley, vinegar, lemon, butter. 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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