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Steamed Fish

A whole fish is seasoned, steamed, and served with potatoes, lemon, egg, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Steamed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and steam

  1. Rub the fish with salt and lemon juice.

  2. Place the fish in a steamer over boiling water.

  3. Steam until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish on a platter lined with a folded napkin.

  2. Surround the fish with Saratoga potatoes and garnish with parsley, lemon slices, and hard-boiled egg.

  3. Serve a good sauce in a sauce-boat alongside.

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

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + potatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Fish + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Steaming cooks the flesh gently, keeping it moist and flaky.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Steam until cooked through. Fish turns dry and tough when overcooked, and underdone fish is unsafe to eat. Check that the flesh is opaque and flakes easily at the thickest part before removing it from the steamer.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lemon, parsley, egg, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lemon, parsley, egg, sauce. 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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