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To Boil Fish

A boiled cod head and shoulders served with butter, flour, breadcrumbs, parsley, horseradish, lemon, and various sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

To Boil Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the eyes from the cod and fill the sockets with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let it sit for 1-2 days.

  3. Boil the cod's head and shoulders until cooked through.

  4. Carefully remove the skin from the cod.

Cook before the fire

  1. Place the cod before a brisk fire, basting with butter and dredging with flour.

  2. Once froth rises, sprinkle fine bread crumbs over the cod and continue basting until fully cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with fried parsley, horseradish, and lemon slices, with sauces on the side.

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. Parsley + lemontop 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 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

Cod
The main protein, which firms and flakes as it cooks through.
Butter
Basting fat that adds richness and helps the surface brown.
Flour
Dredged over the surface to help form a dry, browning coating.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on the fish once they are sprinkled on.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the bread crumbs. Crumbs added too early can burn before the fish cooks, while adding them once froth appears lets fat and moisture help them brown and stick to the surface.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, bread, parsley, horseradish, oyster, sauce):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, bread, parsley, horseradish, oyster, sauce. 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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