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Fish Salads

A salad made from various fish or shellfish, seasoned with salt, lemon juice or vinegar, and optional vegetables and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fish Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash oysters, scallops, or clams, then drain them.

  2. Marinate for 1 hour.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil in salted water with lemon juice or vinegar.

  2. Add onion, carrot, parsley, and celery for flavor, but do not overpower the fish.

  3. Adjust water quantity based on fish size; do not use excess water.

  4. Cook fish until done.

  5. Drain and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the salad and is the element the cooking must keep tender.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fish and cooking liquid.
Salt
Seasons the cooking water so the fish is flavored as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook fish until done. Shellfish turn firm and rubbery when overcooked, because proteins tighten and squeeze out moisture. Stopping as soon as the flesh turns opaque keeps it tender.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lemon, carrot, parsley, celery):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lemon, carrot, parsley, celery. 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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