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Halibut Salad

A baked halibut mixture with lemon, paprika, and cream, served as a salad and garnished with mayonnaise and shrimp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Halibut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped halibut, onion juice, lemon juice, paprika, coarse sea salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Fold in the beaten cream and egg whites until well mixed.

  3. Grease timbale molds with butter and fill them with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the oven until firm.

  2. Once cooled, remove from the molds and arrange on a salad dish.

  3. Garnish with mayonnaise around and on top of the fish, and add shrimps at the base.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Forms the main body of the salad and provides its flavour and protein structure.
Eggs
Egg whites set when baked, giving the salad a firm, light structure.
Thick cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the baked mixture tender rather than dry.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Folding in the cream and egg whites. Beaten cream and egg whites hold air; folding gently keeps that air in, so the mixture rises and sets light rather than dense and rubbery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pepper, cream, egg, butter, shrimp):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, cream, egg, butter, shrimp. 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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