Name: Cold Boiled Fish a LA Vinagrette
Ingredients: cold boiled fish, skin and bones removed; 2 cold hard boiled eggs, finely chopped; small lettuce leaves; watercress; cold boiled potatoes, sliced; beets, sliced; parsley sprigs; Vinaigrette sauce

Why it works: Lettuce and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Boiled Fish a LA Vinagrette

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

Place the prepared fish in the center of a dish.
Sprinkle the chopped eggs over the fish.
Garnish with lettuce leaves, watercress, sliced potatoes, and beets.
Add parsley sprigs for decoration.

Serve

Serve the vinaigrette sauce in a separate dish.
Pour a spoonful of sauce over each serving as you serve it.

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.

Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together307 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Watercress + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together469 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Watercress + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together170 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled fish: Forms the main body of the salad as the central protein.
Hard boiled eggs: Add a soft, crumbly texture and mild richness when chopped over the fish.
Cold boiled potatoes: Add starchy body and a mild, soft texture to the salad.
Vinaigrette sauce: Adds acidity and moisture that cut through the cold fish and eggs.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, lettuce, watercress, parsley, sauce):

Horseradishfits better
Shallotfits better
Chivefits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, lettuce, watercress, parsley, sauce. 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.