Skip to main content
Salad

Fish or Game Salad

A salad of cold fish or game with lettuce, cucumber, beetroot, greens, herbs, mayonnaise, and garnishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fish or Game Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Take the remains of any cold boiled fish.

  2. Cut the fish pieces into small scallops or neat pieces about 1.5 inches.

  3. Dip the fish pieces into mayonnaise sauce.

Prepare the greens

  1. Prepare two young heads of lettuce, a little endive, and watercress.

  2. Drain the greens in a colander.

  3. Dry the greens in a clean cloth by shaking.

  4. Break the lettuce, watercress, and endive into pieces about ¾ inch long.

  5. Mince a small sprig of chervil, two leaves of tarragon, and a few leaves of sorrel.

  6. Peel one cucumber and slice it.

  7. Peel one beetroot and slice it.

  8. Mix all ingredients thoroughly.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Rub the serving dish with garlic.

  2. Layer the green vegetables at the bottom of the dish.

  3. Add a layer of cold fish, meat, chicken, lobster, shrimp, fowl, or game.

  4. Spread a thin layer of mayonnaise sauce on top.

  5. Continue layering with vegetables.

  6. Finish with a layer of mayonnaise sauce on top.

  7. Garnish with nasturtium flowers.

  8. Arrange some beetroot and cucumber around the edge of the dish.

  9. Optionally, add hard-boiled eggs, olives, or aspic jelly for decoration.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

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

  4. Beetroot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 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

What each ingredient does

Cold fish
Provides the main protein and savoury body of the salad.
Mayonnaise sauce
Adds fat and moisture, binding the fish and coating the greens richly.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp, watery base layer that gives the salad its fresh texture.
Beetroot
Adds earthy sweetness and a striking colour contrast to the layers.
Cucumber
Contributes cool, crisp moisture and a light refreshing bite.
Tarragon
Adds a sharp, aromatic anise-like flavour that lifts the rich mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Dry the greens thoroughly before layering. Water left on the leaves dilutes the mayonnaise sauce and makes the greens limp, so drying them well keeps the layers crisp and the dressing thick.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, beetroot, egg, fish, tarragon, chervil, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, beetroot, egg, fish, tarragon, chervil, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes