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Fish Sandwiches

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Fish Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Flake the fresh fish finely.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Add chopped pickle, lemon juice, and celery or onion extract.

  4. Mix with mayonnaise dressing or moisten with a sauce.

  5. For anchovies, sardines, or salt fish, pound to a paste and moisten with lemon juice.

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

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

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Fish + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,487 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, lemon, sauce):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, lemon, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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