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Carp Roe

Cakes made from carp roe, vinegar, bread crumbs, lemon zest, cayenne pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Carp Roe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roes

  1. Place the roes in a stewpan.

  2. Sprinkle the roes with salt.

  3. Cover the roes with vinegar.

  4. Boil the roes for 10-15 minutes.

  5. Chop the roes.

Make the cakes

  1. Mix the chopped roes with bread crumbs, lemon zest, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  2. Form the mixture into cakes.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a Dutch oven with butter.

  2. Bake the cakes until hot, about a few minutes.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 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

Carp roes
Provide the main body of the cakes, firming when boiled so they can be chopped and shaped.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the chopped roes hold together as cakes.
Lemon zest
Adds a bright aroma that lightens the richness of the roe.

The step that matters

Boiling the roes. Boiling firms the roe so it can be chopped and shaped. Boiling too briefly leaves it soft and hard to form, while boiling too long toughens the proteins and makes the cakes dry and rubbery.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, vinegar, bread, lemon, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, vinegar, bread, lemon, 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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