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Fish Salad

This recipe uses raw egg yolks in the mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cover the bottom of a dish with flaked cold fish.

  2. Add a layer of sliced cold potatoes, beetroot, and celery.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Top with sliced gherkins and a macedoine of vegetables.

  5. Mask with mayonnaise and garnish with chopped gherkins, hard boiled eggs, beetroot, and green celery tops.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Potato + beetroottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together330 recipes

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

  3. Beetroot + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together652 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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

Swap the beetroot

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, potato, celery, pepper, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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