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Potted Fish

A fish dish baked with spices and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and dry the fish without washing it.

  2. Cut off the head, tail, and fins.

  3. Remove the bones if desired.

  4. Cut the fish into lengths.

  5. Season with powdered cloves, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  6. Pack the seasoned fish pieces into pots.

Bake and set

  1. Cover with a coarse paste.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until done.

  3. Remove the paste.

  4. Drain the fish from the gravy.

Finish

  1. The next day, pour clarified butter over the fish.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 bakes slowly.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and seals the fish from air, helping it keep well.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and helps draw out moisture for a firmer texture.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven until done. A slow oven cooks the fish gently so it becomes tender without drying out. Baking too hot can toughen the flesh and dry it before the pots are fully cooked through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, clove, nutmeg, pepper, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, clove, nutmeg, pepper, butter. 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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