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Fish Salad

A salad of cold fish, egg, sugar, mustard, vinegar, butter, and lettuce, topped with hard‑boiled egg slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce 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 fish

  1. Remove all bones from the cold fish and separate it into small pieces using two forks.

Make the dressing

  1. Combine the beaten egg, sugar, mustard, vinegar, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture until it just boils and thickens to a cream.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and mix in the chopped lettuce leaves.

  2. Arrange small lettuce leaves on a platter and place a large spoonful of the salad on each leaf.

  3. Top each leaf with a slice of hard-boiled egg.

  4. To serve, slip the leaf and its contents onto the plate.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Thickens the sauce as it heats and gives it a rich, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Cold fish
Forms the main body of the salad, flaked into small pieces.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until it just boils and thickens. Beaten egg thickens when gently heated, but overheating can scramble it into lumps. Stop heating as soon as the sauce thickens to a smooth cream.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, sugar, mustard, vinegar, butter):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, sugar, mustard, vinegar, butter. 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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