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Salad

Fish Salad

A salad made with cooked fish, lettuce, mayonnaise, and optional sardines, eggs, cabbage or celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove skin and bones from the cold cooked fish.

  2. Flake or cut the fish into pieces.

Assemble

  1. Spread the fish on lettuce leaves.

  2. Cover with mayonnaise dressing.

  3. Add sardines and hard-boiled eggs if desired.

  4. You can also mix the fish with cabbage or celery instead 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.

  1. Lettuce + cabbagetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

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

  4. Fish + cabbagetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together44 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked fish
Forms the main body of the salad and provides its protein and flavour.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, coating the fish and binding it together with a creamy texture.

Swap the cabbage

The recipe marks cabbage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lettuce, egg):

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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