Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Boiled Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the fish
Tie the mackerel in a clean cloth.
Boil the fish for 45 minutes.
Make the gravy
In a bowl, mix the flour and butter together.
Add enough boiling water to wet the mixture and stir.
Pour the mixture into a pan and boil for 5 minutes until thickened.
Serve
Place the fish on a platter and pour the gravy over it.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Fresh water mackerel
- Forms the main body of the dish, becoming firm and opaque as it cooks in boiling water.
- Flour
- Its starch swells and thickens the liquid into a gravy when heated.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the gravy.
The step that matters
Thickening the gravy. Flour must be stirred into the liquid and boiled so its starch swells and thickens the gravy. Stirring while adding the water helps prevent lumps, and boiling long enough cooks out the raw flour taste.
“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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