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Boiled Fish

A fish cooked in a spiced broth of onions, peppers, garlic, bay leaves, parsley, thyme, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine onions, red pepper, cloves, garlic, bay leaves, parsley, thyme, coarse sea salt, and black pepper with water.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

Cook the fish

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly and salt it.

  2. Tie the fish in a napkin and place it in the boiling water.

  3. Boil the fish for 10 minutes for each pound.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish with drawn butter and minced parsley.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavor into the broth as they simmer.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma to the broth that carries into the fish.
Fish
The main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks in the broth.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and fat that complements the mild, poached fish.

The step that matters

Boil the fish for 10 minutes for each pound. Boiling is vigorous, so overcooking toughens fish protein and makes it dry and flaky in the wrong way. Timing by weight helps stop cooking at the point where the flesh is just opaque and tender.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, garlic, parsley, thyme, fish, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, garlic, parsley, thyme, fish, butter. 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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