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Fish Salad

A chilled halibut salad dressed with French vinaigrette and garnished with colorful vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Let the boiled halibut cool completely.

  2. In a bowl, combine salad oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper to make a French dressing.

Assemble and chill

  1. Pour the dressing over the cooled fish in the serving bowl.

  2. Garnish with beets, carrots, onions, lemon slices, and any colorful cold vegetables.

  3. Cover and refrigerate overnight before serving.

  4. This salad can be kept for up to a week if stored very cold.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled halibut
Forms the main body of the salad as a flaky, cold protein.
Salad oil
Adds moisture and richness, carrying flavor through the dressing and coating the fish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps firm the fish's surface.

The step that matters

Cooling the halibut completely before dressing. Pouring dressing over warm fish can make it break apart and turn mushy, and warm fish can absorb oil unevenly. Cooling it fully keeps the flakes intact and lets the dressing cling evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, carrot, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, carrot, lemon. 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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