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To Dress Fish

A fish dish served with a sauce of shallots, anchovies, bay leaf, horseradish, lemon peel, red port, cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Dress Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Dip the fish into cold water.

  2. Heat boiling fat in a pan.

  3. Fry the fish until crisp and green, but do not overcook.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate pot, combine shallots, anchovies, bay leaf, horseradish, lemon peel, and red port.

  2. Season with Cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  3. Boil until thick, then strain over the fish.

Serve

  1. Stew the fish gently and serve in a deep dish with the sauce and fried bread around it.

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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
The main component, which is fried until crisp and then gently stewed in the sauce.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the sauce.
Red port
Adds sweetness and fruity depth, and its reduction thickens the sauce as it boils.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent aroma and heat to the dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.
Shallots
Provide a mild aromatic base that softens and sweetens in the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the fish until crisp and green, but do not overcook. Frying sets a crisp outer surface while the inside stays moist. Overcooked fish turns dry and firm, and it will not absorb the sauce well when stewed afterwards.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, shallot, lemon, pepper, bread):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, shallot, lemon, pepper, bread. 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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