Skip to main content
Main

Brown Caviare

A preserved fish roe and liver mixture seasoned with spices and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Brown Caviare

Ingredients

Directions

Cure and cook

  1. Tie the roes and livers separately in cloths.

  2. Dissolve 1 pound of coarse sea salt and 1 ounce of saltpetre in a gallon of boiling water.

  3. Simmer the roes for 4 hours and the livers for 2 hours by the fireside.

  4. Let them cool in the water they were boiled in.

Clean and pound

  1. Remove all skins and dark specks from the roes and livers.

  2. Pound them separately in a mortar until smooth.

  3. Mix 2.5 ounces of liver with 1.5 ounces of roes on a clean board using a broad knife until no film or dark specks remain.

Season

  1. Sift together the powdered spices and add table salt to taste.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish roes
Form the main body and firm, grainy texture of the caviar.
Codfish livers
Add richness and a softer, smoother texture to the mixture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the fish and helps preserve it during curing.
Saltpetre
Works with the salt to cure the fish and help preserve its colour.

The step that matters

Removing all skins and dark specks. Leftover membrane and dark specks stay tough and can taste bitter or gritty. Pounding and mixing until smooth gives an even texture, so the cleaning must be thorough before the fish is pounded.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, liver, cinnamon, clove, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, liver, cinnamon, clove, pepper. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes