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Broiled Trout with Cream

Broiled trout served with a cream sauce seasoned with sea salt and black pepper, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Broiled Trout with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Grill the trout

  1. Grease the bars of a hot grill to prevent the fish from sticking.

  2. Turn the trout frequently until well cooked.

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, heat ½ cup of cream.

  2. Season the cream with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Bring the cream to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the boiling cream over the fish.

  2. Decorate with parsley before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Cream + parsleytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,392 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Trout
The main protein, which firms and turns flaky as it cooks through.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the savoury flavour of the grilled fish.

The step that matters

Grease the hot grill bars. A light coat of fat forms a barrier between the fish and the hot metal. Without it, the proteins bond to the grill, so the skin sticks and tears when the fish is turned.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, pepper. 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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