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Salad

Fish Salad

A chilled salad of sliced fish, greens, and vegetables topped with mayonnaise and garnished with herbs and flowers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut cold boiled fish into small scallops, about 2 inches.

  2. Dip the fish into mayonnaise sauce.

  3. Wash and dry the lettuce, endive, and watercress.

  4. Tear the greens into pieces about ¾ inch long.

  5. Mince chervil, tarragon, and sorrel.

  6. Peel and slice the cucumber and beetroot.

  7. Rub the serving dish with garlic.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Layer the greens, then the fish, followed by a thin layer of mayonnaise.

  2. Repeat layers, finishing with mayonnaise on top.

  3. Garnish with nasturtium flowers and arrange reserved beetroot and cucumber around the edge.

  4. Add hard-boiled eggs, olives, or aspic jelly for decoration.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold fish
Provides the main protein; coated in mayonnaise to keep it moist and flavourful.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and richness, binding the fish and greens while keeping them moist.
Endive
Adds crisp texture and a slightly bitter note that balances the rich mayonnaise.
Watercress
Adds a peppery bite and crisp texture to the layered greens.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp, neutral base of the layered salad.
Hard-boiled eggs
Optional decoration; adds richness and a mild, creamy contrast.

The step that matters

Dip the fish into mayonnaise sauce. Fish coated in mayonnaise before layering helps keep it moist and seasons it evenly. Dry, washed greens are also important, since surface water thins the mayonnaise and makes the salad soggy.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, beetroot, fish, tarragon, chervil, sorrel, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, beetroot, fish, tarragon, chervil, sorrel, sauce. 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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