Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Fish with Lemon Sauce

A boiled fish served with a lemon‑egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Remove the gills from the fish and bone it.

Make the lemon sauce

  1. In a bowl, stir the grated rind of the lemons 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, then add the sugar and chopped parsley.

Poach the fish

  1. In a pot, boil water and add salt, onion, whole pepper, parsley, and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.

  2. Cook the fish in the boiling water until done.

Thicken the sauce if needed

  1. For a thicker sauce, cook 1 teaspoon of cornstarch (dissolved in cold water) with the strained fish stock, or add more egg yolks.

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

Pike or salmon trout
Forms the main body of the dish; cooking firms its flesh into flakes.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat and give it a rich, smooth body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the yolks.
Lemons (rind)
Contribute aromatic oils that add fragrance to the sauce.
Fish stock
Provides the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the egg yolk and stock mixture until thick. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the mixture gets too hot it can scramble and curdle. Stir constantly and keep the heat moderate so the sauce turns smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the parsley

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

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipes