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Salad

Egg and Fish Salad

A chilled salad of sliced eggs and salmon mixed with spices, served in potato nests on lettuce with mayonnaise and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 322 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Egg and Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fish mixture

  1. Slice the eggs and mix with equal parts of salmon.

  2. Rub the mixture into a paste and add coarse sea salt, paprika, butter, and vinegar; mix until smooth.

Assemble and serve

  1. Form nests with the mashed potatoes and fill each with a ball of the fish mixture.

  2. Place lettuce leaves on a dish and arrange the potato nests on top.

  3. Add a spoonful of mayonnaise on each fish ball.

  4. Use the egg whites to create a border on the leaves and place pieces of jelly in each egg ring.

  5. Serve 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. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Egg + salmontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Give the fish mixture body and a soft, creamy texture.
Salmon
Provides the main fish flavour and bulk of the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier mixture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich fish and egg flavours.
Mashed potatoes
Form the starchy nests that hold the fish mixture in shape.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture to the fish balls for a smooth finish.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture into a paste. The fish and egg must be worked until smooth so the filling holds together and has an even texture. Under-mixing leaves lumps, while the fat from butter needs to be fully incorporated to avoid a greasy, separated filling.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, salmon, butter, vinegar, potato):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, salmon, butter, vinegar, potato. 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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