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Kippered Fispi

A smoked fish prepared by salting, seasoning, and smoking, then fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Kippered Fispi

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Scale and clean the fish, then cut it open like a haddock.

  2. Pepper the fish well and rub in a mixture of 4 parts coarse sea salt to 1 part moist sugar, adding lemon juice for each half-pound of the mixture.

  3. Cover the fish with a layer of salt and let it sit overnight.

  4. In the morning, repeat the rubbing and cover again with salt.

Smoke and serve

  1. On the third day, hang the fish over a fire with damp straw or in the smoke of a wood fire to smoke it.

  2. In the evening of the third day, cut the fish into pieces and fry them in 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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the fish, firming its flesh during the cure.
Moist sugar
Balances the salt with sweetness and helps the cure taste rounded rather than harsh.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the cured fish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and browns the pieces when they are fried.

The step that matters

Rubbing and salting the fish. Salt must be worked in evenly and covered fully. Uneven coverage lets some areas cure too little and spoil, while others become too salty and dry. Repeating the rub the next morning keeps the cure penetrating the thick flesh.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, sugar, butter):

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, sugar, 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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