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Salad

Fish Salad

A salad made from boiled fish, celery, butter, salt, and dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the fish until done, then remove the bones.

  2. Cool the fish and cut it into pieces.

Make the salad

  1. Chop the celery to match the amount of fish.

  2. Mix the fish and celery with butter and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add your choice of salad dressing and serve.

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

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

  2. Fish + celerytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Celery + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the salad and provides its protein and flavor.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, crunchy contrast to the soft fish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the fish and celery.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter. 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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