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Salad

Fish Salads

A salad of oysters, scallops, clams, and other fish mixed with onion, carrot, parsley, celery, and aromatic herbs, seasoned with salt and lemon or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 the seafood

  1. Wash the oysters, scallops, and clams thoroughly.

  2. Drain and marinate them for an hour.

Cook the seafood

  1. For cooked seafood, heat them in their own liquor until boiling, then drain and cut in halves.

  2. Discard the adductor muscle of the oyster if desired.

  3. Boil other fish in salted water (1 ounce of salt per quart) with lemon juice or vinegar.

  4. Add onion, carrot, parsley, celery, and herbs to enhance flavor without overpowering the fish.

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

Oysters
Provide the main briny, delicate seafood flavour and tender texture when cooked.
Scallops
Contribute sweetness and a tender texture that firms when heated.
Little-neck clams
Add briny sea flavour and a tender, chewy texture when cooked.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps firm the seafood's proteins.
Onion
Adds aromatic savoury depth to the cooking liquid without overpowering the fish.

The step that matters

Heating the shellfish in their own liquor. Heating only until boiling and then draining matters because overcooking firms shellfish proteins, making them rubbery and dry. Shellfish cook quickly, so timing is critical.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, scallop, clam, lemon, carrot, parsley, celery):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, scallop, clam, 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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