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Boiled Rock Fish

A boiled rockfish served with parsley and butter, fish sauce, or catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Rock Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scale, empty, and clean the fish thoroughly.

  2. Remove the eyes and gills, then wash the fish in cold water.

  3. Dredge the fish lightly with flour.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the fish in a kettle of hot salted water.

  2. Boil for about 30 minutes or until cooked through.

  3. Drain the fish well and place it on a serving dish.

  4. Garnish with sprigs of double parsley and serve with drawn butter, fish sauce, or catsup.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  5. Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rockfish (in the method)
Provides the main body of the dish, becoming flaky and tender when cooked through.
Flour
Light dredging coat that helps the surface hold together during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil until cooked through. Boiling for too long makes delicate fish tough and dry, while stopping too early leaves the flesh translucent and unsafe. Check that the flesh flakes easily at the thickest point.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, butter. 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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