Skip to main content
Main

Potted Fish

Seasoned fish is sealed in a jar with spices and vinegar, then boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Mix allspice and cloves, and place in small muslin bags.

  3. Sprinkle coarse sea salt on each fish.

  4. Roll the fish in a cloth with cayenne pepper.

Pack the jar

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

  2. Cover the fish with cider vinegar.

Seal and cook

  1. Seal the jar with a plate.

  2. Roll out dough to twice the thickness of pie crust.

  3. Seal the edges of the dough to make it airtight.

  4. Place the jar in a pot of cold water.

  5. Boil for 3 to 5 hours.

  6. 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 as it cooks slowly in the jar.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the fish.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and draws out moisture, firming its texture as it cures.
Allspice and cloves
Contribute warm aromatic flavour that penetrates the fish during cooking.

The step that matters

Seal the dough airtight. A tight seal keeps steam and flavour inside the jar during the long boil. Gaps let water in and dry out the fish, so the dough must be sealed fully around the edges.

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.

You might also like

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