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To Broil Fish

A whole fish is buttered, seasoned, and broiled until cooked, then garnished with parsley and lemon or watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

To Broil Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the fish, wash it, and wipe it dry.

  2. Cover the fish with softened butter and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Grease the broiler with salt pork or butter.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the fish flesh side down until browned before turning.

  2. Cook thick fish for about 20 minutes and thin fish for less time.

  3. Check for doneness with a fork.

  4. Once done, place the fish on a hot platter and season with butter, salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.

  5. Garnish with lemon or watercress, or serve with a sauce.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whole fish
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks to flaky, opaque flesh under the broiler.
Softened butter
Adds moisture and richness, helping the surface brown and the flesh stay tender.

The step that matters

Broil flesh side down until browned before turning. Starting flesh side down gives the surface a chance to brown and set before the fish is turned, so it holds together and keeps its moisture. Turning too early can tear the flesh and dry it out.

“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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