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The Brill

A boiled brill fish seasoned with lemon, salt, vinegar, and served with lobster sauce and garnishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

The Brill

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Thoroughly clean the brill and remove the scales, leaving the fins on.

  2. Rub the fish with lemon juice and a little salt.

Poach

  1. Place the brill in a fish kettle with enough cold water to cover it, along with ½ cup of coarse sea salt and 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

  2. Bring the water to a boil.

  3. Reduce to a simmer for 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the size of the fish.

  4. Skim the surface to maintain the fish's color.

Serve

  1. Serve the brill on a napkin.

  2. Garnish with lemon, curled parsley, horseradish, and sprinkle with lobster coral.

  3. Serve with lobster sauce in a tureen.

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. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Brill
The main fish, poached whole so its flesh cooks gently and stays moist.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water and helps firm the surface of the fish.
Vinegar
Adds a mild acidity to the poaching water that brightens the fish's flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and seasons its surface before poaching.

The step that matters

Simmer, don't boil, and skim the surface. A hard boil breaks up the delicate flesh and can cloud the fish's color, while gentle simmering cooks it evenly. Skimming removes foam that would otherwise settle on the fish and dull its appearance.

“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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