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Smelts Yielded After the Manner of Anchovies

Contains saltpetre, which may pose food safety risks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove 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 ↓

Smelts Yielded After the Manner of Anchovies

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Clean the smelts, washing them as little as possible.

  2. Layer the smelts in a jar, sprinkling each layer with a mix of common salt, coarse sea salt, saltpetre, white pepper, long pepper, nutmeg, mace, and finely powdered cloves.

  3. Cover the fish with boiled cold vinegar.

  4. For a redder color, add a small amount of cochineal to the mixture.

  5. Include at least three or four bay leaves and a small piece of lemon peel in the jar.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (smelt, pepper, nutmeg, mace, clove, vinegar, lemon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against smelt, pepper, nutmeg, mace, clove, vinegar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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