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Broiled White Fish

Broiled White Fish is a grilled fish served with melted butter, parsley, salt, pepper, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Broiled White Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the fish down the back and remove the backbone.

  2. Preheat the grill and grease it.

Broil

  1. Broil the fish for 5 minutes.

  2. Turn the fish and cook for another 5 minutes.

  3. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot platter with melted butter, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Garnish with slices of lemon.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish; its flesh firms and turns flaky as it cooks.
Melted butter
Adds moisture and richness, helping the fish stay tender after broiling.

The step that matters

Turn the fish and cook for another 5 minutes.. Direct heat firms and dries fish quickly. Turning it promotes even cooking, and the flesh should turn opaque and flake easily. Overcooking leaves it dry.

“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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