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Salad

Whitefish Salad

A chilled salad of whitefish mixed with a mustard-egg yolk dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Whitefish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks.

  2. Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop until it forms a thick paste.

  3. Stir in the salt, cayenne pepper, prepared mustard, mashed boiled egg yolks, and lemon juice.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix well and combine with the whitefish.

  2. Serve chilled.

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. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Emulsify the olive oil into a thick, stable paste that gives the salad its body.
Olive oil
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture when emulsified with the yolks.
Whitefish
Provides the main flesh and savory flavor of the salad.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the richness of the oil and yolks.
Prepared mustard
Contributes sharpness and helps stabilize the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil. Oil must be added slowly, drop by drop, so it disperses into the yolks. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving a greasy, separated paste instead of a thick, smooth dressing.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whitefish, egg, olive, pepper, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whitefish, egg, olive, 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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