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Caveached Fish

A pickled fish dish seasoned with vinegar, spices, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Caveached Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Sprinkle fish with coarse sea salt and white pepper.

  2. Fry fish in oil until cooked, then drain and let cool.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil vinegar with white peppercorns, cloves, mace, and salt to flavor.

  2. Allow vinegar mixture to cool, then add ½ cup of oil.

Pack and cover

  1. Pack fish in a jar, layering with thinly sliced onion.

  2. Pour cooled pickle over fish and cover well.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, absorbing the pickling flavors as it sits.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the fish and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy character.
Onion
Adds sharpness and aroma that mellows as it soaks in the pickle.
Oil
Adds fat and richness to the pickle and softens the acidity.

The step that matters

Let the cooled pickle reach room temperature before pouring. Pouring hot pickle over the fish can soften its texture and cook it further, leaving it mushy. Cooling the vinegar mixture first keeps the fish firm and intact.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, vinegar, clove, mace, onion):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar, clove, mace, onion. 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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