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Fish Salad

A salad of striped bass steaks served with a lemon‑cayenne sauce made from fish bones, onion, butter, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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, fry the onion in butter.

  3. Add the bones, 1 quart of boiling water, salt, and pepper to the pot.

  4. Boil the fish steaks in this mixture until firm, then remove to a platter.

  5. Strain the cooking liquid.

Make the sauce

  1. Squeeze the lemon juice into the strained liquid, adding cayenne to taste.

  2. Remove the pot from heat, let it cool slightly, and gently stir in the beaten eggs mixed with a little cold water.

  3. Return to low heat, stirring constantly until thickened but not boiling.

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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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, becoming firm and flaky when gently poached.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the eggs.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the onion base, softening it before the liquid is added.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with eggs. Egg yolks set at low temperature, so the mixture must stay below boiling while stirring constantly. Boiling can curdle the eggs and leave the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against striped bass, fish, 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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