Name: Fish Salads
Ingredients: cold cooked fish; French dressing or mayonnaise; salt and pepper to taste; Lettuce leaves

Why it works: Pepper and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Salads

Ingredients

cold cooked fish
French dressing or mayonnaise
salt and pepper to taste
Lettuce leaves

Directions

Cut the cold cooked fish into bite-sized pieces.
Dress the fish with French dressing or mayonnaise.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve the dressed fish on a bed of lettuce leaves.

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.

Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Fish + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together196 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,948 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked fish: Forms the bulk of the salad and supplies its main texture.
French dressing or mayonnaise: Adds moisture and richness, and coats the fish pieces with flavour.