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To Pickle Smelts

A brine of wine, vinegar, spices, and sweet oil preserves smelts in a jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

To Pickle Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lay the smelts in rows in a jar.

  2. In a pot, combine Port wine, lemon slices, vinegar, ginger, nutmeg, mace, pepper, salt, cochineal, saltpetre, sugar, and bay leaf.

  3. Boil the mixture, then skim it clean.

Pickle and store

  1. Pour the cooled mixture over the smelts.

  2. Add a little sweet oil on top.

  3. Seal the jar tightly with bladder and leather.

  4. Store the jar in a cool place.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
Are the main fish being preserved, so they absorb the pickling liquid.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the fish and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and rounds out the sweet-sour flavour.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the fish and keeps its colour firm during pickling.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and a rich, fruity aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Pour the cooled mixture over the smelts. Pouring the liquid over smelts while it is still hot can partly cook the delicate fish and make it soft. Letting it cool first keeps the texture firm and lets the acid penetrate evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (smelt, port wine, lemon, vinegar, ginger, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against smelt, port wine, lemon, vinegar, ginger, nutmeg, pepper. 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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