Why it works: Fish and sugar work together. They rank in the top 42% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 207 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
How to Cure and Smoke Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fish
Scale and clean the fish by slitting it up the back.
Wipe the fish with a damp cloth, but do not wash it.
Cure
Mix the salt, brown sugar, and saltpetre together.
Rub the mixture well inside and out of the fish.
Stack the fish on top of each other with a board on top.
Place heavy weights on the board to press the fish down.
Let the fish sit for 60 hours.
Drain and wipe the fish dry.
Smoke
Stretch the fish open and fasten with small pieces of stick.
Smoke the fish for five days in a smokehouse or in a barrel over a smothered wood fire.
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.
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Fish + sugartop 42% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together207 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fish
- The main ingredient, which the cure and smoke transform into a preserved product.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the fish by inhibiting bacterial growth.
- Brown sugar
- Balances the salt's harshness and adds a mild sweetness to the cured fish.
- Saltpetre
- Helps keep the cured fish's color and inhibits bacterial growth during curing.
The step that matters
Rub the mixture well inside and out of the fish. Salt must reach every part of the flesh, especially thick areas near the backbone, or spoilage can begin in untreated spots during the long cure.
“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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