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Fish Salad

A chilled salad of fish, lettuce, onions, truffles, eggs, mustard, cream, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Cut the cold dressed fish into small pieces.

  2. Mix the fish with the small salad, chopped lettuce, boiled onions, and sliced truffles.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, mix the yolks of three hard boiled eggs with mustard and salt.

  2. Blend in the cream and vinegar until smooth.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Pour a salad mixture over the fish and arrange it into a high shape in the center.

  2. Garnish with sliced hard boiled egg whites and add cucumber if desired.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Fish + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold dressed fish
Forms the main body of the salad, providing its protein and flavour.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Mashed with mustard and cream, they form a smooth, rich emulsified dressing.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness of the yolks and cream.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps bind the dressing as an emulsifier.
Onions
Boiled until tender, they add mild sweetness and soft texture to the salad.

The step that matters

Blend in the cream and vinegar until smooth. Adding cream and vinegar gradually to the mashed yolks and mustard helps form a stable, smooth emulsion. Adding them all at once can cause the dressing to split or turn grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lettuce, truffle, egg, mustard, cream, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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