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Broiled Fish

Broiled fish prepared by cleaning, salting, buttering, broiling, and serving on lettuce with parsley, lemon, and radishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Broiled Fish

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the fish properly: small ones whole, large ones sliced or split from head to tail.

  2. Rub each piece with salt inside and out, and let sit for two hours.

Broil and serve

  1. When ready, wash and dry each slice, coat with butter, and broil both sides over moderate heat.

  2. Serve on lettuce leaves, garnished with parsley, sliced lemons, and red radishes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a flaky, tender texture under the broiler.
Butter
Adds fat that carries heat to the surface, helping the fish brown and stay moist.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that cut the richness of the butter and fish.

The step that matters

Drying each piece before broiling. Surface moisture must be removed before broiling, or the fish steams instead of browning and the butter may not adhere well.

“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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