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Fish Salad

A salad of striped bass steaks served with a lemon‑cayenne egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 the fish

  1. Cut the fish into steaks and reserve the bones.

  2. In a pot, combine the bones and onion fried in butter with 1 quart of boiling water, salt, and pepper.

  3. Boil the fish steaks in this liquid until firm, then remove to a platter.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the cooking liquid and squeeze in the lemon juice, adding cayenne to taste.

  2. Remove the pot from heat, let it cool slightly, and mix a little cold water with the beaten eggs.

  3. Pour the egg mixture gently into the hot liquid while stirring briskly.

  4. Return to heat and stir constantly until it thickens, but do not boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and let it cool.

  2. Garnish with strips of beet or red pepper and small lettuce leaves.

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

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

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Striped bass
Forms the main body of the salad, firming up when gently boiled.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cooking liquid into a smooth, rich sauce when heated gently.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the eggs.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor to the cooking liquid when fried in butter.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the hot liquid. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the sauce boils or is added too hot without tempering and constant stirring, the eggs can scramble and turn grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (striped bass, fish, butter, egg, pepper, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against striped bass, fish, butter, egg, pepper, 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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