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Fish Salad

A salad of flaked cold cooked fish, lettuce, pickled gherkins, beet, hard boiled egg, olive oil, vinegar, lemon, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove bones from the fish and flake it into small pieces.

  2. Wash, dry, and shred the lettuce.

  3. Season the fish and lettuce with salt, ground red pepper, and mix well.

Dress and serve

  1. Combine olive oil and vinegar until well blended, then pour over the fish and lettuce.

  2. Mix carefully and serve in a pile on a serving dish or salad bowl.

  3. Garnish with slices of lemon, pickles, beet, hard boiled egg, and chopped parsley.

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

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

  2. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked fish
Provides the main protein and flaky texture of the salad.
Olive oil
Adds fat and moisture, coating the fish and lettuce and carrying flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the oil.
Lettuce
Forms the leafy base and adds crisp, cool texture.
Hard boiled egg
Adds richness and a soft, creamy texture as a garnish.

The step that matters

Mix carefully and serve in a pile. Fish flakes break apart easily when tossed. Gentle mixing keeps the pieces intact, and dressing just before serving stops the lettuce from wilting and turning limp.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, olive, pepper, vinegar, egg, lemon. 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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