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To Boil Rock Fish

A boiled rock fish served with horse-radish garnish, butter or anchovy butter, and fried roe and liver.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Horse and radish work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 529 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

To Boil Rock Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and boil

  1. Clean the rock fish thoroughly.

  2. Place the fish in a kettle with cold water and coarse sea salt.

  3. Boil gently and skim the surface well.

  4. Once cooked, drain the water and place the fish on a serving dish.

Serve

  1. Garnish with scraped horse-radish.

  2. Melt butter and mix with chopped parsley for serving, or use anchovy butter as an alternative.

  3. Fry the roe and liver separately and serve in small dishes.

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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Anchovy + roetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Radish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together120 recipes

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

  4. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Horse + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rock fish
Provides the main flesh that is cooked gently in salted water.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the cooking water so the fish is flavoured as it poaches.

The step that matters

Boil gently and skim the surface well. A gentle simmer keeps the fish tender and prevents it from breaking apart, while skimming removes the foam that cooking releases, keeping the broth clean and the flesh clean-tasting.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, horse, butter, parsley, anchovy, roe, liver):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, horse, butter, parsley, anchovy, roe, liver. 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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