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Kippered Fish

A method of curing and smoking freshwater fish with salt, sugar, lemon juice, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Kippered Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cure

  1. Scale and clean the fish, then cut it open like a haddock.

  2. Pepper the fish well and rub in a mixture of 4 parts coarse sea salt and 1 part moist sugar, adding lemon juice for each half-pound of the mixture.

  3. Cover the fish with a layer of salt and let it sit overnight.

  4. In the morning, repeat the rubbing and cover again with salt.

Smoke and serve

  1. On the third day, hang the fish over a fire with damp straw or in the smoke of a wood fire to artificially smoke it.

  2. In the evening of the third day, cut the fish into pieces and fry them in butter.

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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh-water fish
The main protein; its flesh is cured, smoked and then fried.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the fish during curing.
Moist sugar
Balances the salt with mild sweetness and helps flavour the cure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the cured fish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the fish brown when fried.

The step that matters

Curing with salt and sugar. Salt draws water out of the flesh and firms it, while the sugar balances the saltiness. Too little salt or curing time leaves the fish soft and prone to spoiling, and too much makes it harsh, so the rubbing and overnight cover need to be followed closely.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, sugar, butter. 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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