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Boiled Smelts

Boiled smelts served with a sauce of wine, butter, flour, lemon, garlic, parsley, and chives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,665 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Boiled Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, scale, wash, and dry the smelts.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the smelts in equal parts white wine and water with olive oil, salt, pepper, and sliced lemon.

  2. Once cooked, prepare the sauce by warming white wine, butter mixed with flour, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, and chives in a saucepan.

  3. Pour the sauce over the smelts and serve.

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. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
Provide the delicate white fish that is the main component of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the sauce, mellowing the acidity of the lemon and wine.
Flour
Thickens the butter and wine sauce so it coats the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and sweetens as it cooks in the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to both the poaching liquid and the sauce.

The step that matters

Warming the butter and flour sauce. Butter mixed with flour must be warmed gently and stirred so the starch swells evenly and the sauce thickens smoothly; high heat can scorch the butter or leave lumps.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (smelt, white wine, olive, pepper, lemon, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against smelt, white wine, olive, pepper, lemon, butter, flour. 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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