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To Dress Fish

A fish dish dressed with a sauce of cullis, shallots, anchovies, bay leaf, horseradish, lemon peel, red port, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Dress Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Dip the fish in cold water.

  2. Fry the fish in boiling fat until crisp and green.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine cullis, shallots, anchovies, bay leaf, horseradish, lemon peel, and red port.

  2. Season with Cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  3. Boil until thick, then strain over the fish.

Finish and serve

  1. Stew gently and serve in a deep dish with the sauce and fried bread around 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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cullis
Thickens the sauce and gives it a rich, savory body.
Red port
Adds sweetness and depth, and its acidity balances the rich sauce.
Anchovies
Melt into the sauce, adding salty, savory depth without a fishy taste.
Horseradish
Provides sharp pungency that mellows as the sauce cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts its richness.
Chopped shallots
Add a mild, sweet aroma as they cook into the sauce.

The step that matters

Dip the fish in cold water before frying. Water on the fish surface turns to steam and spatters in hot fat, which keeps the coating from crisping. Drain and dry the fish well before it goes into the boiling fat.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, shallot, lemon, pepper, bread. 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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