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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 cooked through.

  2. Remove the bones and let the fish cool.

  3. Cut the fish into pieces.

Assemble and serve

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

  2. Mix the fish with chopped celery, butter, and 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 bulk of the salad and provides its main protein texture.
Celery
Adds crisp crunch that contrasts with the soft, flaky fish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the fish.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture and seasoning that binds the salad together.

The step that matters

Removing the bones and cooling the fish. Bones left in the flaked fish are a choking and injury hazard. Letting the fish cool before mixing keeps the butter from melting and greasing the salad, and keeps the celery crisp.

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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