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To Pickle Salmon and Other Fish

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Salmon and Other Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the fish into pieces about 1.5 inches long.

  2. Wash and dry the fish with a cloth.

  3. Flour the fish and dip them in egg yolks.

  4. Fry the fish in plenty of oil or butter until golden brown.

  5. Drain the fish in a vessel until cold.

  6. Layer the fish in a pot, adding mace, cloves, and nutmeg between layers.

  7. Boil vinegar with shallots, garlic, white pepper, Jamaica pepper, long pepper, and salt until flavorful.

  8. Let the vinegar mixture cool, then pour it over the fish, adding a little oil on top.

  9. Cover the pot with a lid.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, clove, nutmeg, white wine, vinegar, shallot, garlic):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, clove, nutmeg, white wine, vinegar, shallot, garlic. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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