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Pickled Fish

A dish of leftover cooked fish preserved in vinegar seasoned with mace, cloves, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Pickled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Bone the leftover fish carefully and place it in a deep dish.

Pickle and rest

  1. Boil the vinegar and season it with mace or cloves and white pepper.

  2. Strain the boiled vinegar over the fish.

  3. Let it sit overnight for better flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes
  4. Fish + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together586 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Fish + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Leftover cooked fish
The main ingredient, whose flesh is firmed and flavored by the acidic pickling liquid.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the fish as it pickles.
Mace or cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Letting it sit overnight. The acid of the vinegar needs time to penetrate the fish and balance its flavor. Serving it too soon leaves the fish tasting sharp on the surface and flat inside.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, vinegar, mace):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar, mace. 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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