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Potted Fish

A fish preserved in a jar with spices, vinegar, and dough sealing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 ↓

Potted Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the backbone from the fish.

  2. Place allspice and cloves in small muslin bags.

  3. Sprinkle coarse sea salt directly on the fish.

  4. Roll the fish in cloth and sprinkle with cayenne pepper.

Pot and seal

  1. Layer fish, spice bags, and sage in an earthen jar.

  2. Cover with cider vinegar.

  3. Seal the jar with a plate and cover with rolled-out dough.

  4. Ensure the dough adheres tightly to the jar edges.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the jar in a pot of cold water and boil for 3 to 5 hours.

  2. Let it cool before serving.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during the long, gentle cooking.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the fish.
Allspice and cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour that penetrates the fish through the bags.
Sage
Adds a herbal aroma that complements the fish and spices.

The step that matters

Sealing the dough tightly to the jar. A tight seal keeps steam and liquid inside the jar during the long boil, so the fish stays moist and the flavours concentrate rather than leaking out or diluting in the water bath.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, allspice, clove, pepper, cider, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, allspice, clove, pepper, cider, 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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