Skip to main content
Main

Cavitched Fish

Cavitched Fish is a preserved fish dish made by frying perch, layering with onions, and simmering in a seasoned vinegar and mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cavitched Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Season the cleaned perch with cayenne pepper, black pepper, and salt.

  2. Fry the perch in sweet oil until light brown.

  3. Add sliced onions to the oil and fry until brown.

  4. Let the fish cool completely.

Pickle and serve

  1. In a deep vessel, layer the fish and sprinkle the fried onions on top.

  2. In a pot, combine vinegar, fish cooking liquid, mace, cloves, whole black pepper, minced garlic, cayenne pepper, mixed mustard, catsup, sweet oil, and salt.

  3. Boil the mixture until it is flavorful.

  4. Pour the hot or cold mixture over the fish, ensuring the fish is fully covered.

  5. Taste the liquid after a day or two and adjust seasoning if necessary.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Perch
Firm white flesh that holds its shape through frying and soaking in the pickling liquid.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the pickled fish.
Sweet oil
Conducts heat for frying, giving the fish and onions a golden browned surface.
Onions
Fried until brown, they add sweetness and a toasty flavour to the finished dish.
Mixed mustard
Adds sharp pungency that complements the vinegar in the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Let the fish cool completely before layering. Pouring the pickling liquid over warm fish can make the flesh soften and break apart, and trapped heat can affect texture. Cooling first keeps the fish firm and intact.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, vinegar, fish, clove, garlic, mustard):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, vinegar, fish, clove, garlic, mustard. 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.

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes