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Fish Salad

A salad of cold boiled lake trout mixed with a dressing of egg yolks, oil, mustard, sugar, vinegar, and seasonings, served on lettuce.

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 Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the trout

  1. Shred the cold boiled lake trout into pieces about 1 inch long.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with salad oil until smooth.

  2. Add salt, pepper, mustard, sugar, and vinegar to the mixture and beat until light.

  3. Just before serving, gently fold in the frothed egg white.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a serving dish, combine the trout with 6 tablespoons of vinegar and half of the dressing.

  2. Spread the remaining dressing over the top and arrange blanched lettuce leaves around the edges.

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

Lake trout
Forms the main body and flesh of the salad.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the dressing, giving it a smooth, thick body.
Salad oil
Adds fat and richness, giving the dressing a silky texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the rich oil and yolks.
Egg white
Whipped into froth, it lightens the dressing with trapped air.
Prepared mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, savoury bite.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg white just before serving. The frothed egg white holds its air only briefly. Folding it gently, and right before serving, keeps the dressing light; stirring hard or waiting lets it deflate and turn the dressing dense.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

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