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Fish Salads

A chilled fish salad made with white fish, mayonnaise, and optional garnishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fish Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the firm white fish until done and let it cool.

  2. Mix the cooled fish with mayonnaise in a bowl.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange lettuce leaves on a serving plate.

  2. Spoon the fish mixture over the lettuce.

  3. Garnish with olives, pickles, and capers if desired.

  4. Serve with tartare sauce instead of mayonnaise if preferred.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Capers + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Fish + caperstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Firm white fish
Provides the flaked protein that forms the body of the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture that bind the fish into a creamy, spreadable mixture.

The step that matters

Let the fish cool before mixing. Warm fish would melt or break the mayonnaise, causing the mixture to turn oily and loose instead of creamy and cohesive.

“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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