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Boiled Halibut

A simple boiled halibut with onion, carrot, parsley, celery, bay leaf, thyme, clove, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Boiled Halibut

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the halibut in a saucepan and cover it with fresh water.

  2. Add the sliced onion, carrot, parsley, celery, bay leaf, thyme, clove, salt, and vinegar.

  3. Cover the saucepan and cook gently for no more than 30 minutes after reaching a boil.

  4. Remove the fish, drain well, and serve on a hot dish.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Is the main protein that turns firm and flaky as it cooks gently in liquid.
Vinegar
Adds a little acidity that brightens the flavour of the poaching liquid.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching liquid and the fish as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook gently after reaching a boil. Once the liquid boils, a gentle simmer cooks the fish evenly. A hard boil toughens and breaks up the flesh, so the 30-minute limit matters.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, celery, thyme, clove, vinegar):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, celery, thyme, clove, vinegar. 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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