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Cavitched Fish

A pickled fish dish made from fried perch, onions, vinegar, fish liquor, spices, mustard, catsup, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cavitched Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Season the cleaned perch with cayenne pepper, black pepper, and salt.

  2. Fry the perch in sweet oil until light brown.

  3. Add sliced onions to the oil and fry until brown.

  4. Let the fish cool completely.

Pickle

  1. In a deep vessel, layer the fish and sprinkle the fried onions on top.

  2. In a pot, combine vinegar, boiled fish liquor, mace, cloves, whole black pepper, minced garlic, cayenne pepper, mixed mustard, catsup, sweet oil, and salt.

  3. Boil the mixture until it tastes of the spices.

  4. Pour the hot or cold mixture over the fish, ensuring they are covered.

  5. Taste the liquor after a day or two and adjust seasoning if necessary.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Perch
The main fish, which firms up when fried and then soaks up the pickling liquor.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the fish and gives the pickle its tang.
Sweet oil
Fries the fish and onions, adding browning and richness to the dish.
Onions
Fried until brown, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the layers.
Mixed mustard
Adds pungency and a sharp note that balances the vinegar.

The step that matters

Let the fish cool completely before layering. Placing warm fish in the pickling liquor or packing it while hot can make the flesh break apart and turn soft. Cooling it fully keeps the pieces firm and lets the pickle absorb evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, vinegar, fish, clove, garlic, mustard):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, vinegar, fish, clove, garlic, mustard. 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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