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To Dress Fish

A fish dish prepared by salting, drying, broiling, and topping with anchovy butter and a sauce of butter, flour, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Dress Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the fish

  1. Pound saltpetre, coarse sea salt, and coarse sugar together.

  2. Rub the mixture into the salmon and let it drain for 24 hours.

  3. Rub the salmon with common salt and let it sit for another 24 hours.

  4. Dry the salmon thoroughly, hanging it in a chimney with a wood fire or in a dry place, propped open with two small sticks.

Broil the fish

  1. Wash and dry trout well, then tie it with packthread to maintain its shape.

  2. Melt butter with basket salt and cover the trout with it.

  3. Broil the trout over a clear fire at a distance, cooking it gradually.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Wash and bone the anchovy, chop it small with capers.

  2. Melt butter with a little flour, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and vinegar, then pour this sauce over the trout and serve hot.

  3. Cover turbot in cold water, add a handful of salt and a glass of vinegar, and let it boil gradually.

  4. If the fish is not done in the middle, make small slits down the back and belly with a sharp knife.

  5. Skim the water well, garnish with curled parsley, lemon, and horse-radish, and serve with lobster, anchovy butter, and plain butter in separate dishes.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Capers + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Capers + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together211 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Anchovy + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Saltpetre
Helps cure the fish, firming its flesh and preserving it during the long salting.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the fish and firms its flesh during curing.
Coarse sugar
Balances the harshness of the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness to the fish while it broils, and forms the base of the sauce.
Anchovy
Gives the butter sauce a salty, savoury depth of flavour.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter so the sauce clings to the fish.

The step that matters

Broil the trout over a clear fire at a distance. Thick fish must cook slowly so the heat reaches the middle. Too close or too hot, the outside scorches and the centre stays raw, which is why the slits are made if it is not done in the middle.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, anchovy, capers, sauce, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, anchovy, capers, sauce, flour, pepper. 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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