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Salad

Fish Salad

A salad of boiled or fried fish mixed with egg yolks, capers, oil, vinegar, and beef extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and capers work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 165 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the fish of skin and bones without mashing the meat.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, rub the hard-boiled egg yolks very fine.

  2. Slowly add the raw egg yolks and salt, stirring for a while.

  3. Gradually add the sweet oil, vinegar or lemon juice, and extract of beef.

Combine

  1. Gently mix in the fish and capers.

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 + caperstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Fish + beeftop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Vinegar + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,453 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + caperstop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Egg + caperstop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Hard-boiled and raw yolks bind the oil and vinegar into a smooth, creamy emulsion.
Sweet oil
Adds richness and a silky texture to the dressing.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Capers
Add a briny, sharp accent that cuts through the richness.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Adding oil slowly while mixing lets the yolks disperse it into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast can break the emulsion, leaving the dressing oily and separated.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersthe original
  3. Pepperfits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, vinegar, beef. 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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