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Boiled Smelts Another Way

Boiled smelts prepared with salt, sugar, parsley, and optional arrowroot thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 137 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Smelts Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the smelts

  1. In a small stewpan, combine salt, sugar, and parsley with enough water to cover the smelts.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add the smelts and simmer for 5 minutes, covered.

  3. Carefully remove the smelts and place them on a dish.

  4. Pour the broth over the smelts.

Thicken the broth

  1. If desired, mix arrowroot with a drop of cold water and add it to the broth when the smelts are half cooked.

  2. Ensure the broth does not burn; there should be about three parts liquid remaining after cooking.

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. Parsley + arrowroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Smelt + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Smelt + parsleytop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + parsleytop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,535 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
Provide the delicate fish that is gently cooked in the seasoned broth.
Arrowroot
Thickens the broth into a light, glossy sauce when heated.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot slurry. Arrowroot must be mixed with cold water first and added to the simmering broth; added dry or to a boil it clumps, and it thickens only when heated, not boiled hard for long.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (smelt, sugar, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against smelt, sugar, parsley. 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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