Skip to main content
Main

Fish Salad

A salad of boiled potatoes, haricot beans, hard‑boiled eggs, sardines, anchovies, and a mustard‑oil‑vinegar dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 655 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Bake the potatoes, then peel them and let them cool.

  2. Cook the haricot beans as usual.

  3. Boil the eggs until hard.

  4. Slice the cooled potatoes into a bowl or glass dish and mix them with the beans.

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the skin, bones, and fillets from the sardines and anchovies.

  2. Mix the sardines and anchovies with the vegetables.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. In a mortar, pound the yolks of two eggs with ¼ teaspoon of mustard and a pinch of salt.

  2. Add enough oil to create a smooth cream.

  3. Mix in one-third the quantity of vinegar.

  4. Pour the dressing over the vegetables and stir to combine.

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. Potato + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

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

  2. Beans + vinegartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Potato + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

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

  5. Beans + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that holds the salad together and absorbs the dressing.
Eggs
Egg yolks emulsify with oil and mustard to form a smooth, creamy dressing.
Haricot beans
Add body and substance, giving the salad a firm, filling texture.
Sardines
Contribute rich, savoury fish flavour and oils to the salad.
Anchovies
Add concentrated salty, savoury depth that seasons the whole salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts the richness of the oil and fish.

The step that matters

Adding the oil to the yolks. Oil must be added slowly while pounding the yolks so they emulsify into a smooth cream; adding it too fast causes the dressing to split and turn greasy.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, egg, vinegar):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Beansthe original
  4. Peasfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, vinegar. 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.

More fish salad recipes

Cold Boiled 3with Mayonnaise 3 See all 81 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes