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To Collar Trout

A trout seasoned with pepper, salt, mace, vinegar, beer, bay leaves, and butter, then rolled and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and beer work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 302 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

To Collar Trout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the trout

  1. Wash the trout and split it along the back.

  2. Remove the bones and dry it with a cloth.

  3. Season the trout with black pepper, coarse sea salt, and mace.

  4. Roll the trout tightly and place it in a dish.

Bake

  1. Pour equal parts vinegar and beer over the trout, adding bay leaves and whole black pepper.

  2. Cover the dish with buttered paper and bake for one hour.

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. Vinegar + beertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Beer + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + beertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together940 recipes

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

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Trout
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming firm and flaky as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps firm the fish's surface.
Beer
Adds liquid and malty flavour to the braising mixture around the trout.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carried into the dish through the buttered paper cover.

The step that matters

Covering the dish with buttered paper. The paper traps moisture and gentle heat around the rolled trout, so it cooks through slowly without drying out. Buttering it keeps the paper from sticking and adds a little richness.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, vinegar, beer, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, beer, 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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