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Fish Dinner

A cold fish salad with potato, beet, egg, carrot, pickle, and a mustard‑cayenne sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cooked potato, beet, hard-boiled egg, carrot, and cucumber pickle into small pieces.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped ingredients with the codfish.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate pan, heat the olive oil and butter over low heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute until smooth.

  3. Add the mustard, cayenne pepper, and salt, mixing well.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the chopped ingredients and stir to combine.

  2. Heat everything together in a chafing dish until warmed through.

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. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  2. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 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

Olive oil
Adds fat and richness to the dressing, carrying the flavour of the other seasonings.
Butter
Adds fat and a rich flavour to the dressing base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and oil mixture so it can coat the salad smoothly.
Mixed mustard
Adds sharp, acidic flavour that cuts through the fat and the earthy vegetables.
Codfish
Provides the main fish flavour and protein of the salad.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the fat. Flour stirred into hot fat must be cooked briefly over low heat so it loses its raw taste and forms a smooth, thickened base. Heating too fast can scorch it or leave lumps, so the mixture should stay gentle and be stirred constantly.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, egg, cucumber, olive, butter, flour, mustard):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, cucumber, olive, butter, flour, mustard. 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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