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Kippered Seer-Fish Omelette

A smoked seer-fish omelette served with optional purées and sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 213 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Kippered Seer-Fish Omelette

Ingredients

Directions

Cure and smoke the fish

  1. Split, wash, and dry the seer-fish with a cloth.

  2. Rub in coarse sea salt, sugar, and lime juice.

  3. Repeat the rubbing the next day.

  4. Hang the fish over a fire with damp straw to smoke it.

  5. After smoking, hang it in the cook-room over the fire until ready to serve on the third evening.

Prepare the omelette

  1. If using roe, soak and boil until tender.

  2. Prepare the omelette with butter and add optional ingredients as desired.

  3. Serve the omelette on a bed of tomato puree, green peas puree, or spinach puree, and top with grated cheese.

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. Lime + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Tomato + spinachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Lime + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,878 recipes

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

  4. Peas + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Seer-fish
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the smoky, salted flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the fish and seasons it during curing.
Sugar
Balances the salt and promotes browning on the fish surface.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the cured fish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the omelette and helps it brown lightly in the pan.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and browns on top when the dish is finished.

The step that matters

Repeat the rubbing the next day. Salt and sugar must penetrate the flesh gradually. A second rub reinforces the cure so the fish is evenly seasoned and firm before smoking.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, sugar, lime, butter, cheese, peas, spinach):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, sugar, lime, butter, cheese, peas, spinach. 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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