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Fish Grenade

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fish Grenade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Carefully remove the fish from the bones and skin.

  2. In a bowl, combine cream, anchovies, sage, mustard, vinegar, cayenne, salt, and pepper.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a dish, creating a mound in the center.

  4. Cover the top with bread crumbs and dot with butter.

  5. Brown the top using a salamander or broiler.

  6. Garnish with slices of lemon before serving.

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. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sage, vinegar, pepper, bread, butter, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sage, vinegar, pepper, bread, butter, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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