Why it works: Whiting and white pepper work together. They rank in the top 38% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24 recipes. The science ↓
Dried Whitings
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Split the whitings open at the belly from the head to just below the vent and clean them out.
Place the fish in coarse sea salt for 6 hours.
Dry
Wash the fish in salt and water, then hang them up to drip for 2 to 3 hours.
Rub white pepper inside the fish to prevent flies while drying.
Optionally, smoke the fish for 4 hours to preserve them.
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.
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Whiting + white peppertop 38% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together24 recipes
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Whitings
- The fish is the main ingredient that is split, salted, dried and optionally smoked.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the fish and helps preserve it during curing.
- White pepper
- Rubbed inside the fish to help deter flies while it dries.
The step that matters
Salting the whitings. Salt must penetrate evenly and draw out moisture for preservation. Too little salt or too short a cure leaves the flesh vulnerable to spoilage, while over-salting makes the fish overly hard and salty.
“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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