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Pickled Fish

Pickled fish made by boiling vinegar with spices and pouring over cold boiled salmon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Remove skin and bones from the salmon and place it in a deep dish or bowl.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar in a pot.

  2. Mix the spices with a little vinegar in a cup before adding to the pot, then add mace, clove, white pepper, and allspice to the boiling vinegar.

  3. Boil the mixture for 2-3 minutes, keeping it covered.

  4. Strain the pickle through muslin into a pitcher.

Pickle the salmon

  1. Pour the hot pickle over the salmon, cover, and set aside.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Leftover cold boiled salmon
Forms the main body of the dish, absorbing the flavour of the hot pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the fish.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the pickle.
Clove
Adds a strong, warm aroma that infuses the pickle.
White pepper
Adds gentle, sharp heat to the pickle.
Allspice
Adds a warm, mixed-spice aroma to the pickle.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot pickle over the salmon. The pickle must be hot and fully boiled so the spices and acidity infuse the fish evenly. Pouring it over salmon that is still cool or not fully covered can leave some pieces under-flavoured and the surface exposed to air.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, vinegar, mace, clove, allspice):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, vinegar, mace, clove, allspice. 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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