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Potted Fish

Fish is boiled in a jar with spices, vinegar, and a dough seal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the backbone from the fish.

  2. Mix allspice and cloves in a small muslin bag.

  3. Sprinkle coarse sea salt on each fish.

  4. Roll the fish in a cloth.

  5. Sprinkle the fish with cayenne pepper.

Pot and seal

  1. Layer fish, spice, and sage in an earthen jar.

  2. Cover with best cider vinegar.

  3. Seal the jar with a plate.

  4. Cover the jar with rolled-out dough.

  5. Ensure the dough adheres tightly to the jar edges.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the jar in a pot of cold water and boil for 3 to 5 hours.

  2. Let it cool before serving.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the body of the dish, becoming tender as it cooks slowly in the sealed jar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the fish, helping preserve it during the long cooking.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fish.
Allspice and cloves
Contribute warm aromatic flavour that permeates the fish during cooking.

The step that matters

Seal the jar tightly with dough. A tight seal keeps steam and aroma inside the jar and stops liquid escaping into the boiling water. A loose seal lets water in and weakens the flavour and texture of the fish.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, allspice, clove, pepper, cider, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, allspice, clove, pepper, cider, vinegar. 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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