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Salad

Fish Salad

A chilled salad of flaked boiled fish, shrimp, capers, vinegar, and mayonnaise, served on lettuce with egg, beetroot, and aspic garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and lettuce 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

  1. Flake the cold boiled fish into a bowl.

  2. Add the chopped shrimps, capers, pepper, celery seed, and vinegar.

  3. Mix in cayenne or minced green chili if desired.

  4. Stir in enough mayonnaise dressing to moisten the mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve on a bed of lettuce leaves, garnished with sliced hard-boiled eggs, beetroot patterns, and aspic jelly.

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. Capers + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Capers + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 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

Cold boiled fish
Forms the bulk and flaky texture of the salad.
Shrimps
Adds savoury flavour and a tender, slightly chewy bite.
Capers
Contribute sharp, briny acidity that brightens the mixture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the dressing.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture that bind and coat the fish and shrimp.

The step that matters

Stir in enough mayonnaise dressing to moisten the mixture. Too little dressing leaves the salad dry and crumbly, while too much makes it greasy and loose. Add it gradually so the fish is coated but still holds its flakes.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, shrimp, capers, pepper, vinegar, 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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