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Fish for Roasting

A roasted fish head served with a sauce of anchovy, liver, shrimp, red wine, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 615 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the fish thoroughly.

  2. Score the fish with a knife.

  3. Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt on the fish.

  4. Place the fish in a large tin oven or a stewpan with something behind it to ensure proper cooking.

  5. Discard the water that comes from the fish for the first 30 minutes.

Roast the fish

  1. Sprinkle nutmeg, cloves, mace, and salt over the fish.

  2. Dust the fish with flour.

  3. Baste the fish with butter.

  4. Turn the fish.

  5. Season the fish.

  6. Baste the other side of the fish.

  7. Turn the fish often.

  8. Baste the fish frequently.

  9. Add bread crumbs on top of the fish.

  10. Roast the fish for 4 to 5 hours.

Make the shrimp sauce

  1. Prepare melted butter with an anchovy and the boiled, crushed liver of the fish, mixing well.

  2. Add 2 egg yolks to the butter mixture.

  3. Heat the mixture until boiling.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Return the strained sauce to the saucepan.

  6. Add shrimps to the saucepan.

  7. Add red wine to the saucepan.

  8. Add lemon juice to the saucepan.

  9. Simmer the sauce for 1-2 minutes.

  10. Pour the sauce into the pan where the fish was roasted.

  11. Stir the sauce well.

  12. Return the sauce to the saucepan.

  13. Stir the sauce until boiling.

Serve

  1. Place the fish on a large dish.

  2. Pour the sauce into a tureen.

  3. Serve the fish hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Fish + anchovytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together615 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Butter + breadtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish head
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavour of the roasting juices.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the surface while the fish roasts.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a smooth, rich texture as they set with heat.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on the top of the fish as it roasts.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg sauce.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the egg yolk and butter mixture until boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they heat but can curdle or scramble if overheated, so the sauce should be brought to a boil carefully while stirring to keep it smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, nutmeg, mace, flour, butter, bread, anchovy):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleyabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Marjoramabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, nutmeg, mace, flour, butter, bread, anchovy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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