Skip to main content
Main

To Dress Any Kind of Salted Fish

A sauce of butter, flour, wine, vinegar, herbs, and spices served over salted fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Dress Any Kind of Salted Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the salted fish and soak it in fresh water overnight.

  2. Place the fish on a perforated tin plate in a fish kettle.

Cook the fish

  1. Sprinkle pounded cloves and black pepper over the fish, along with the garlic, herbs, tarragon, vinegar, and wine.

  2. Roll the butter in the flour, cut it into small pieces, and place it over the fish.

  3. Cover the kettle and simmer over low heat for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Carefully remove the fish and place it in a serving dish over hot water.

  2. Cover the dish until the gravy has boiled a little longer.

  3. Remove the garlic and herbs.

  4. Pour the gravy over the fish and serve.

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. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Salted fish
Forms the main body of the dish, flavoured by soaking to reduce its saltiness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the gravy become smooth and glossy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when combined with the butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the gravy.
Wine
Contributes liquid and aromatic flavour to the gravy as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmer over low heat with the butter and flour on top. Gentle heat lets the butter and flour melt and thicken the liquid slowly without scorching or breaking the gravy, while the fish cooks through evenly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, garlic, parsley, tarragon, vinegar, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Fennelfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, garlic, parsley, tarragon, vinegar, wine. 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.

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes