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Potted Fish

A fish is boiled in a sealed jar with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the backbone from the fish.

  2. Place allspice and cloves in a small muslin bag.

  3. Sprinkle coarse sea salt on the fish.

  4. Roll the fish in a cloth and sprinkle with cayenne pepper.

Pot and seal

  1. Layer fish, spice, and sage in an earthen jar.

  2. Cover with cider vinegar.

  3. Seal the jar with a plate and cover with rolled dough to make it air‑tight.

Cook and cool

  1. Place the jar in a pot of cold water and boil for 3 to 5 hours.

  2. Let it cool 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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, becoming tender and flaky as it cooks slowly.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps preserve the fish.
Sea salt
Seasons the fish and draws out moisture, firming its texture and aiding preservation.
Allspice and cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic flavour that infuses the fish during the long cook.

The step that matters

Seal the jar airtight. If the dough seal leaks, steam and liquid escape and the water bath can enter the jar, diluting the flavour and making the fish less safe to keep. A tight seal holds the moisture and aroma in while the fish cooks slowly and evenly.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, allspice, clove, pepper, cider, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, allspice, clove, pepper, cider, vinegar. 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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