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Boiled Fish with Lemon Sauce

A boiled fish served with a lemon sauce made from egg yolks, lemon juice, and fish stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Boiled Fish with Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin and bone the fish before boiling.

Make the lemon sauce

  1. In a bowl, stir the grated lemon rind with the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Add the lemon juice and gradually pour in the hot fish stock while stirring constantly.

  3. Cook the mixture until thick, stirring continuously.

  4. Add the sugar and parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve with fish boiled in salted water with onion, whole pepper, parsley, and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Salmon + fishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Lemon + fishtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set during gentle cooking, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the yolks.
Fish stock
Provides the liquid base of the sauce and carries savory fish flavor.
Pike or salmon trout
Is the main protein, cooked gently by boiling until it turns opaque and flaky.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until thick, stirring continuously. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot they scramble and turn grainy. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the sauce becomes smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, lemon, egg, sugar, fish):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lemon, egg, sugar, fish. 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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