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Salad

Fish Salad

A salad of boiled fish mixed with cabbage, celery or lettuce, seasoned with sea salt and black pepper, garnished with lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the fish until cooked, then chop it into small pieces, but not too fine.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped fish, cabbage, and celery or lettuce.

  2. Season the mixture with coarse sea salt and black pepper to taste.

  3. Garnish with tender leaves of the heart of lettuce.

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. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh white fish or trout
Provides the main protein and flaky texture of the salad.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and bulk to the salad.
Celery or lettuce
Adds crunch and freshness that contrasts with the soft fish.

The step that matters

Chopping the fish. Cooked fish breaks apart easily, so chopping it into pieces that are small but not too fine keeps some texture and prevents it from turning mushy when mixed.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, celery, pepper, lettuce. 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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