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Sardine Salad

A salad of boiled fish, sardines, mayonnaise, lettuce, lemon, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sardine Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all bones from the boiled fish and mix it with the mayonnaise.

  2. Lay the mixture on a bed of crisp lettuce.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Split the sardines, remove any bones, and arrange them over the fish mixture with the ends meeting in the center.

  2. Garnish the base of the dish with a wreath of thin lemon slices, parsley, or 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.

  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. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Fish + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together196 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

Boiled fish
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides its main flesh and flavor.
Mayonnaise
Binds the fish into a moist, cohesive mixture and adds richness.
Sardines
Adds a stronger, oily fish flavor as the decorative top layer.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lemon, 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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