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To Dress Fish

A fish dish of eel and salmon coated with forcemeat, butter, breadcrumbs, and served with oysters, wine, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Dress Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Season the eel with pepper, coarse sea salt, nutmeg, and cloves, then beat until very fine.

  2. Boil the crumb of a roll in milk.

  3. Beat the mixture with 4 eggs until thick.

  4. Let it cool, then add 4 more raw eggs and mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Remove the skin from the salmon and lay the slices in a dish.

  2. Cover each salmon slice with the forcemeat.

  3. Pour melted butter over them.

  4. Sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  5. Arrange oysters around the dish.

  6. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Pour melted butter mixed with boiled red wine and lemon juice over the dish.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the forcemeat and set it into a firm, sliceable custard-like layer when baked.
Eel
Forms the finely beaten base of the forcemeat, giving it a smooth, dense texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top brown in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and form a crisp, golden crust on the surface.
Milk
Softens the roll crumb so it blends into the forcemeat and adds moisture.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth to the buttered sauce poured over the dish.

The step that matters

Let the forcemeat cool before adding the raw eggs. Adding raw eggs to a hot mixture can partly cook them unevenly and cause curdling, so cooling first keeps the forcemeat smooth and evenly set during baking.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, pepper, nutmeg, milk, egg, salmon, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, nutmeg, milk, egg, salmon, butter. 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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