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Fish in Jelly

A codfish head cooked with aromatics, strained into a gelatinous broth, set with egg whites and lemon peel, and molded.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fish in Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Clean the head of the codfish.

  2. Place the codfish head in a pot with water, calf's foot, horseradish, onion, mace, white pepper, lemon peel, and bacon.

  3. Simmer until it begins to thicken.

  4. Strain and remove fat and sediment.

  5. Boil the strained liquid with sherry, beaten egg whites, and lemon peel for 3 minutes without stirring.

  6. Add the shell of an egg and let it settle for 30 minutes.

  7. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

Prepare the fish

  1. Prepare 4 small mackerel or fresh herrings by cleaning and removing bones.

  2. Roll them up in a cloth to dry.

Set the jelly

  1. Pour a little into a well-soaked mold.

  2. Finely slice an onion.

  3. Season with pepper and salt.

  4. Place the mackerel in it.

  5. Cover the fish with the remaining jelly.

  6. Let it set.

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. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Mace + sherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Bind impurities and clarify the liquid as they coagulate during boiling.
Calf's foot
Adds gelatin, which lets the cooled liquid set into a firm jelly.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a mild sweetness and depth to the jelly.
Codfish head
Provides the main flavour and body for the stock.

The step that matters

Clarifying the boiled liquid. Boil the egg whites and liquid without stirring so the whites rise and trap sediment. Stirring breaks up the forming raft, leaving the jelly cloudy. Straining through a fine sieve afterward gives a clear result.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, mace, white pepper, lemon, sherry, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, mace, white pepper, lemon, sherry, egg. 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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