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Fish Salad

A cooked fish salad made with striped bass, onion, lemon, cayenne, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the fish into steaks and reserve the bones.

  2. In a pot, combine the bones and onion with 1 quart of boiling water, adding a little butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Boil the fish steaks in this liquid until firm, then remove to a platter.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the cooking liquid and squeeze in the lemon juice, adding cayenne to taste.

  2. Remove the pot from heat, let it sit briefly, then mix a little cold water with the beaten eggs.

  3. Pour the egg mixture gently into the hot liquid while stirring briskly.

  4. Return to heat and stir constantly until it thickens, but do not let it boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and let it cool.

  2. Garnish with strips of beet or red pepper and small lettuce leaves.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Striped bass
Forms the main body of the dish, firming up when boiled in the stock.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce that coats the fish.
Egg whites
Are listed in the record but not used in the given steps, so no role is stated.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the eggs.

The step that matters

Thickening the egg sauce. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot or are added to boiling liquid. Stirring the eggs in gently off the heat and then warming slowly, without boiling, lets the proteins thicken the sauce smoothly instead of curdling it.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (striped bass, butter, egg, pepper, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against striped bass, butter, egg, pepper, lemon. 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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