Name: Fish Salad
Ingredients: 1 lb cooked fish; 1 cup shredded lettuce; 1 cup shredded celery; Mayonnaise sauce; 1 hard-boiled egg; salt to taste; pepper to taste

Why it works: Lettuce and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Fish Salad

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove skin and bones from the cold fish and shred it into pieces.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the shredded fish, shredded lettuce, and shredded celery.
Mix all ingredients carefully, adding salt and pepper to taste.

Assemble and serve

Arrange the mixture neatly in a salad bowl.
Pour mayonnaise dressing over the salad.
Garnish with slices of hard-boiled egg.

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.

Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Fish + lettucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together196 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + saucetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 and provides its protein-rich bulk.
Mayonnaise sauce: Adds moisture, richness and fat that coats the shredded ingredients.
Shredded celery: Adds crisp texture and a fresh, slightly sharp crunch.
Shredded lettuce: Adds crisp texture and a light, watery freshness.