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To Dress Fish

A method of curing salmon with saltpetre, sea salt, sugar, and butter, then drying and seasoning with anchovy, capers, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Dress Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the salmon

  1. Pound saltpetre and mix with coarse sea salt and coarse sugar.

  2. Rub the mixture into the salmon and let it sit on a dish for 2 days.

  3. After 2 days, rub the salmon with common salt and let it sit for another 24 hours.

  4. Dry the salmon well and hang it in a chimney or dry place using two small sticks.

Prepare and cook the trout

  1. For trout, boil according to general directions and serve with anchovy sauce and plain butter.

  2. For broiling trout, wash and dry it, then tie it with pack thread.

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

  4. Broil the trout gradually over a clear fire.

Make the sauces and serve

  1. Prepare anchovy by washing, boning, and chopping it with capers.

  2. Melt butter with a little flour, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and vinegar, then pour over the trout 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. Capers + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Saltpetre
Cures the salmon by preserving it and firming its flesh during the long rest.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the salmon and seasons it during curing.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cured flesh.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the trout and forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter sauce so it clings to the trout.
Anchovy
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the sauce served with the trout.

The step that matters

Drying the salmon before hanging. Salmon left damp after curing can spoil or grow mould during hanging. Thorough drying removes surface moisture, which slows microbial growth and helps the cured surface firm up.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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