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Baked Carp

A whole carp baked with butter and a mustard‑cayenne soy‑vinegar sauce, garnished with horseradish and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Baked Carp

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and bake

  1. Clean the carp and stuff it without cutting it open.

  2. Butter a deep dish and place the carp in it.

  3. Cover the fish with buttered paper.

  4. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the fish and place it on a serving dish.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the fish juices with butter rolled in flour, mustard, cayenne, soy sauce, and vinegar.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil and pour it over the fish.

  4. Serve additional sauce in a boat and garnish with horseradish and parsley.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Provides the main body of the dish, which cooks gently under the paper covering.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and when rolled in flour it thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and fish juices into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the sauce and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil. Flour must be heated fully to cook out its raw taste and to thicken the sauce properly. Butter rolled in flour should be whisked into the hot juices so it does not form lumps.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, flour, mustard, pepper, vinegar, horseradish):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, flour, mustard, pepper, vinegar, horseradish. 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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