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Boiled Fish

A simple boiled fish dish seasoned with salt, flour, and vinegar, served with egg or parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,036 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the fish in salted water for 1 hour.

  2. Dry the fish and wrap it in a clean cloth dredged with flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the fish in salted water with 1 tablespoon of vinegar for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with egg or parsley 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. Fish + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  2. Flour + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Fish + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently by boiling in salted water.
Vinegar
Adds a little acidity to the cooking water, sharpening the flavour of the fish.
Flour
Dusts the cloth so the fish is wrapped in a dry layer that helps keep its shape while boiling.

The step that matters

Boil the fish in salted water with vinegar for 30 minutes. Water kept at a gentle simmer cooks the fish through without breaking up its flesh. A hard rolling boil can tear and toughen it, so the heat should stay steady and moderate.

“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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