Name: Fish Salad
Ingredients: 2 lbs cold boiled fish; 1 cup mayonnaise; 8 cold boiled potatoes; 1 head lettuce; 6 hard boiled eggs; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon red pepper; 6 drops Tabasco sauce; 2 teaspoons capers

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Flake the cold boiled fish into a bowl.
Chop the cold boiled potatoes and hard boiled eggs, then add them to the fish.
Stir in the Tabasco sauce, salt, and red pepper.

Combine and serve

Gently fold in the mayonnaise and capers until well combined.
Serve the mixture on a bed of lettuce.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together322 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + caperstop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together224 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise: Adds moisture and richness, binding the fish, potatoes, and eggs together.
Hard boiled eggs: Add body and a soft, creamy texture to the salad.
Cold boiled potatoes: Add bulk and a soft starchy texture that absorbs the dressing.
Cold boiled fish: Forms the main body of the salad, providing protein and flaky texture.

Swap the potato

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

Mustardfits better
Shallotfits better
Horseradishfits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lettuce, egg, pepper, sauce, capers. 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.