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To Tickle Smelts

A pickled fish dish made with smelts, red port, lemon, vinegar, spices, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Tickle Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Arrange the smelts in rows in a jar.

  2. In a pot, combine red port, lemon slices, vinegar, ginger, nutmeg, mace, pepper, coarse sea salt, cochineal, saltpetre, sugar, and bay leaf.

Pickle and store

  1. Boil the mixture, skim it clean, and pour it over the smelts.

  2. Once cool, drizzle a little sweet oil over the smelts.

  3. Seal the jar tightly with bladder and leather.

  4. Store it in a cool place.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
The fish being preserved; they firm and take on the pickling flavour as they sit in the brine.
Vinegar
Its acidity preserves the fish and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy character.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and port with a touch of sweetness.
Red port
Adds sweetness, body and depth of flavour to the pickling liquid.
Saltpetre
Helps keep the fish's colour and firmness during long curing in the brine.
Lemon
Adds citrus acidity and aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Pour the boiled mixture over the smelts and let it cool. Boiling the brine dissolves the spices and sugar and drives off raw harshness, while cooling before sealing prevents heat from softening the fish. The acidic liquid must cover the fish so it is protected from spoilage during storage.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against smelt, lemon, vinegar, ginger, nutmeg, pepper, sugar. 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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