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Fish Salad

A chilled fish salad made with cold dressed fish, salad greens, onions, truffles, eggs, mustard, cream, vinegar, and optional cucumber.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the cold dressed fish into small pieces.

  2. Mix the fish with the small salad, chopped lettuce, boiled onions, and sliced truffles.

  3. Pour a salad dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, salt, cream, and vinegar over the mixture.

  4. Shape the salad high in the center and garnish with sliced hard boiled egg whites and cucumber if desired.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Fish + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks bind the dressing into a smooth, creamy emulsion with the cream.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps stabilise the dressing emulsion.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the dressing, softening the vinegar's sharpness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and balances the rich dressing.
Truffles
Contribute a strong, earthy aroma that perfumes the whole salad.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing over the mixture. The dressing is an emulsion of egg yolks, mustard, cream and vinegar. Pouring it in a steady stream while mixing gently keeps it smooth and coating rather than splitting or pooling. Overworking the delicate fish will break it into flakes.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lettuce, truffle, egg, mustard, cream, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lettuce, truffle, egg, mustard, cream, vinegar. 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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