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To Dress Fish

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Dress Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut off the fins, nick the brown side under the head, and remove the guts from the fish.

  2. Dry the fish with a cloth and boil them in salted water.

  3. Serve with shrimp, cockle, or mussel sauce, and garnish with red cabbage.

  4. To fricassee, raise the flesh on both sides from head to tail, remove the bone, and cut the flesh into six pieces.

  5. Dry the fish, sprinkle with salt, dredge with flour, and fry in hot beef dripping until crisp.

  6. Drain the fat and keep the fish warm.

  7. In a clean pan, combine minced oysters with their strained liquor, white wine, grated nutmeg, and anchovies.

  8. Stew for a few minutes, then add to the fish with fresh butter.

  9. Shake well, heat through, and serve with the sauce.

  10. Garnish with minced yolks of hard-boiled eggs and sliced lemon.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Shrimp + oystertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, beef, flour, oyster, white wine, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, beef, flour, oyster, white wine, nutmeg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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