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To Bake Carp

A carp baked with wine, spices, herbs, anchovy, and a lemon butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Bake Carp

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the scaled carp in a baking dish and cover it with wine.

  3. Season the carp with cloves, nutmeg, mace, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  4. Add sweet herbs and anchovy or anchovy sauce.

  5. Bake for about 1 hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Pour the cooking liquid into a saucepan.

  2. Mix butter and flour, then add to the saucepan with a squeeze of lemon.

  3. Boil the sauce while stirring continuously.

  4. Transfer the fish to a clean dish and pour the sauce over it.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Is the main protein that is baked whole until its flesh turns opaque and flakes.
Wine
Keeps the fish moist during baking and forms the base of the cooking liquid for the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour forms the base that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Anchovy
Adds a savoury, salty depth to the sauce that rounds out the other flavours.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce while stirring continuously. Flour thickens only when its starch granules are heated and dispersed evenly; stirring prevents lumps and scorching at the base of the pan.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, clove, nutmeg, pepper, anchovy, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, clove, nutmeg, pepper, anchovy, butter, flour. 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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