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To Boil Fresh Fish

A boiled fresh fish served with egg sauce or drawn butter, parsley, pickled mushrooms, walnuts, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 865 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Boil Fresh Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly and rub it with coarse sea salt.

  2. Wrap the fish in a towel and place it in a pot of boiling water.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the fish rapidly; large fish take 30 to 45 minutes, small fish take 15 to 20 minutes.

  2. Once cooked, transfer the fish to a serving dish.

  3. Cover the fish with egg sauce or drawn butter and garnish with parsley.

  4. Serve with pickled mushrooms, walnuts, and mushroom ketchup.

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 + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Mushroom + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Fish + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently by boiling in its towel.
Egg sauce or drawn butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mild, cooked fish.
Pickled mushrooms
Adds acidity that cuts through the richness of the fish and sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the plain boiled fish.

The step that matters

Boil the fish rapidly. Rapid boiling brings the water back up to temperature quickly so the fish cooks evenly and stays moist. Cooking times depend on the size of the fish, so check it is cooked through before serving.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, parsley, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Beansfits less well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, parsley, mushroom, ketchup. 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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