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Salad

Fish Salad

A salad of boiled fish mixed with cabbage or celery, seasoned with salt, pepper, mayonnaise, and garnished with lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the fresh white fish or trout until cooked.

  2. Chop the fish into small pieces, but not too fine.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add an equal quantity of chopped cabbage or celery.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and mayonnaise to taste.

  3. Garnish with tender leaves 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. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Fish + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together196 recipes

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

  5. 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

Fresh white fish or trout
Provides the main protein, cooked and flaked to form the body of the salad.
Cabbage or celery
Adds crisp texture and bulk that contrasts with the soft fish.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, binding the pieces together and keeping the salad creamy.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, lettuce):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, lettuce. 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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