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Jellied Fish

A chilled fish dish set in a gelatinous lemon‑salt base, served on lettuce with optional celery or hard‑cooked eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Jellied Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jelly

  1. Mix the fish and capers and place them in a mold.

  2. Soak the gelatin in cold water, then add boiling water and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add lemon juice and salt to the gelatin mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the jelly carefully over the fish and refrigerate until set.

  2. Optionally, add sliced celery or hard cooked eggs to the fish.

  3. Cut into portions and serve on lettuce with salad dressing.

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. Capers + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Capers + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly around the fish.
Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, held in place by the set jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the jelly and fish.

The step that matters

Pour the jelly carefully over the fish. Pouring too fast or from too high can disturb the fish and capers and trap air bubbles. Gelatin needs to be liquid but not hot enough to cook the fish, and it must set fully in the refrigerator for clean portions.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, gelatin, fish, capers, lettuce, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, gelatin, fish, capers, lettuce, egg. 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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