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Fish Salad

A salad of flaked fish, egg yolks, sardines, and dressing served on lettuce with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,559 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Flake the cooked fish and remove any bones and skin.

  2. Mash the yolks of the hard boiled eggs and the sardines to a smooth paste.

  3. Mix the paste with the boiled or mayonnaise dressing.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the fish on lettuce leaves and pour the dressing over it.

  2. Garnish with slices of lemon.

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. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Fish + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together196 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked fish
Forms the main body of the salad, giving it substance and flaky texture.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the paste, they add richness and a creamy body to the dressing.
Sardines
Mashed into the paste, they add a savoury, strong flavour and richness.
Boiled or mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture and fat, binding the paste and coating the fish.

The step that matters

Mashing the yolks and sardines to a smooth paste. If the paste stays lumpy, the dressing will not coat the fish evenly and pockets of strong sardine flavour can taste uneven. Mashing the yolks thoroughly first helps them blend smoothly into the dressing.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, 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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