Skip to main content
Main

Modern Cookery

A fish boiled in water with coarse sea salt and saltpetre, served with horse-radish, oyster sauce, melted butter, and optional anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sauce and anchovy 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 ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the fish.

  2. Clean the inside, especially the backbone.

  3. Place the fish in a kettle.

  4. Cover it with cold water mixed with 5 ounces of coarse sea salt and ¼ ounce of saltpetre.

Boil

  1. Heat over moderate heat.

  2. Skim off any scum that forms.

  3. Boil gently until the fish is cooked, about 20 to 30 minutes for medium-sized fish or up to ½ hour for larger ones.

  4. Drain the fish.

Serve

  1. Serve it on a hot napkin, garnished with the liver and roe.

  2. Add tufts of lightly scraped horse-radish around the edge.

  3. Serve with well-made oyster sauce and melted butter, or anchovy sauce if oysters are unavailable.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  5. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Saltpetre
Helps preserve the fish and gives it a firmer, pinker texture during cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and draws out moisture, firming its flesh during the brine and boil.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the fish is cooked. Boiling vigorously can break up the flesh and toughen it, while gentle simmering cooks the fish evenly. Skimming scum keeps the liquid clean. Fish is done when the flesh flakes easily at the thickest point.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, horse, oyster, sauce, butter, anchovy):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Radishthe original
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, horse, oyster, sauce, butter, anchovy. 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.

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce23 recipesHorseradish ButterHorseradish Butter6 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipes