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Fish Sulze

Fish Sulze is a fish dish prepared in a vinegar-based sauce with spices and optional sharp sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 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 ↓

Fish Sulze

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and cut the fish into pieces, then salt well and pour hot vinegar over it.

  2. Boil white wine, water, and a little vinegar with lemon slices, whole pepper, cloves, mace, bay leaves, and salt.

  3. Add the fish to the boiling mixture and simmer until cooked, then remove the fish and sprinkle with vinegar and lemon juice.

Set in the mold

  1. Strain the sauce through a cloth or fine sieve, add a little gelatine, and layer the fish in a mold.

  2. Pour the sauce over the fish to cover and set in a cool place.

Serve and make the sharp sauce

  1. To serve, invert the mold onto a plate and accompany with vinegar, oil, mustard, sugar, salad, or a sharp sauce.

  2. For the sharp sauce, finely chop juniper berries (if using), rub hard-boiled egg yolks through a sieve, and mix with sugar, mustard, sweet oil, white wine vinegar, and red wine.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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, set within the clear gelatine sauce.
Gelatine
Sets the strained sauce so it holds the fish in a firm, sliceable jelly.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sharp sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and pungency that balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Sweet oil
Adds fat and smoothness to the sharp sauce, softening its acidity.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sharp sauce and cuts the richness of the fish.

The step that matters

Strain the sauce and add the gelatine before layering. Gelatine only sets properly when it is fully dissolved in a clear, well-strained liquid. Straining removes solids that would cloud the jelly and cause uneven setting, so the fish holds its shape when the mold is inverted.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, vinegar, white wine, lemon, pepper, clove, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar, white wine, lemon, pepper, clove, 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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