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Fish Salad

A chilled fish salad with lemon, onions, lettuce, and salad sauce, garnished with parsley and beet-root.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate the fish

  1. Combine the fish pieces, a pinch of salt, and chopped onions in a deep dish.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice over the mixture, cover with a plate, and let it sit for 2 hours.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the drained lettuce into pieces and pile it in the center of a serving dish.

  2. Drain the fish from the lemon juice and arrange it in a circle around the lettuce.

  3. Pour salad sauce over the lettuce, keeping the fish visible.

  4. Garnish with parsley leaves and a small piece of red beet-root.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold fish
Forms the main protein of the salad, firm enough to hold its shape after marinating.
Lemon juice
Acidity that firms and flavors the fish surface during the two-hour marinade.
Fresh lettuce
Provides a crisp, cool base that gives the salad its bulk and texture.
Salad sauce
Adds moisture and richness that coats the lettuce and fish.

The step that matters

Draining the fish from the lemon juice. Acid keeps working on fish left sitting in it, so over-marinating makes the flesh firm and tough. Draining before plating keeps the texture tender and stops the dish from turning watery.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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