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To Pot Trout or Grilse

A trout or grilse seasoned with spices, baked, chilled, and finished with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Pot Trout or Grilse

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the spices and fish

  1. Mix together the spices: cloves, Jamaica pepper, black pepper, cayenne, nutmegs, mace, ginger, and salt.

  2. Clean the fish and remove the heads, fins, and tails.

  3. Place 1 teaspoon of the spice mixture into each fish.

Bake the fish

  1. Lay the fish in a deep earthen jar, backs down.

  2. Cover the fish with clarified butter and tie a paper over the jar's mouth.

  3. Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for 8 hours until the backbone is tender.

Press and pot

  1. Remove the fish from the jar.

  2. Place them in a milk pan, backs upwards.

  3. Cover with a board.

  4. Place a heavy weight on top until completely cold.

  5. Transfer the fish to fresh jars.

  6. Smooth them with a knife.

  7. Cover with clarified butter.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Clarified butter
Seals the fish from air and adds richness and moisture during the long bake.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic flavour that carries through the long cooking.
Black pepper
Adds sharp heat and aroma that balances the rich fat.
Cayenne pepper
Adds pungent heat that sharpens the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Baking slowly until the backbone is tender. Long, low heat slowly breaks down connective tissue and bones so the flesh becomes soft and spreadable. Too high a heat would dry or scorch the fish before the bones soften.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, pepper, nutmeg, ginger, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, pepper, nutmeg, ginger, butter. 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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