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Fish Mayonnaise

A mayonnaise dressing for cold boiled fish served with lettuce garnish.

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

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs to a paste with the salad oil.

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

  3. Just before serving, fold in the beaten egg white.

Assemble and serve

  1. Serve the fish in a glass dish with half the dressing stirred in.

  2. Spread the remaining dressing over the top and garnish with 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. 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
Mashed with oil to form a smooth, rich base for the dressing.
Salad oil
Provides fat that makes the dressing creamy and smooth.
Egg white
Beaten stiff and folded in, it lightens the dressing with trapped air.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps emulsify the dressing.
Cold boiled fish
The main component, dressed and served with the sauce.

The step that matters

Just before serving, fold in the beaten egg white. Beaten egg white loses its air if it sits or is overmixed, so folding it in gently right before serving keeps the dressing light instead of flat and dense.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

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