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White Caviare

A preserved fish milt mixture seasoned with spices and clarified butter, formed into small pots and cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

White Caviare

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milt

  1. Tie the milts in cloths and boil them in salted water with saltpetre.

  2. Once cooled, remove the skins carefully.

  3. Mix the milts with clarified butter until well combined.

Season and set

  1. Add bay leaves, green laurel, mace, table salt, white pepper, nutmeg, and lemon zest.

  2. Press the mixture into small pots and place in a cool oven for a short time.

Seal and store

  1. Once cooled, cover with clarified butter or olive oil and seal with bladder.

  2. Store in a dry, cool room.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Laurel + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together872 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Laurel + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,239 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milt of male fish
Forms the creamy, delicate body of the caviar-like spread.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and moisture and helps bind the milt together.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the milt and gives it a firmer, cured texture.
Bay leaves
Adds a subtle aromatic note to the flavour of the milt.
Lemon zest
Adds bright aroma that lifts the richness of the butter and milt.

The step that matters

Pressing into pots and baking in a cool oven. The mixture must be heated gently for only a short time so it sets and firms without cooking through or becoming grainy. Too much heat can curdle the proteins and dry the mixture, while too little leaves it too soft to keep.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, laurel, mace, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, laurel, mace, nutmeg, lemon. 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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