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Jellied Fish

A chilled fish dish set in gelatin, served with lettuce and tartar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 196 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Jellied Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the fish in salted water until cooked through.

  2. Carefully remove the skin and bones, preserving the shape of the fish.

  3. Place the fish on a platter with the head and tail intact, and sprinkle with whole peppers and bay leaves.

Set the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine for 1 hour, then pour over it 1 quart of hot fish stock.

  2. Pour the gelatine mixture over the fish and set on ice.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, loosen the edges of the gelatine and place crisp lettuce leaves under and around the fish.

  2. Serve with sauce Tartare.

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. Fish + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together196 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Lettuce + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Fish + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,487 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. White pepper + lettucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Fish + white peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together191 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the fish stock into a firm, sliceable jelly around the fish.
Fish stock
Carries flavour into the jelly and, once chilled, gives it body and moisture.
White fish
Forms the main body of the dish, held in shape as it is set in jelly.

The step that matters

Soak the gelatine before adding the hot stock. Gelatine must hydrate in cold liquid first so its granules swell evenly; dropped straight into hot stock they can clump and leave the jelly unevenly set.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lettuce, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lettuce, sauce. 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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