Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Trout Maitre Diiotel

Boiled trout served with a Hollandaise sauce flavored with parsley, butter, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Trout Maitre Diiotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the trout

  1. Wash and drain the trouts, then cut open their backs.

  2. Rub the trouts with melted butter, salt, and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the trouts on a broiler and broil for 10 minutes on one side.

  2. Turn the trouts and cook for another 10 minutes or until nicely browned.

  3. Remove the trouts to a platter.

  4. For the sauce, mix Hollandaise sauce, chopped parsley, butter, pepper, and nutmeg together.

  5. Serve the sauce with the trouts.

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

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Trouts
Form the main body of the dish, cooking through and browning under the broiler.
Hollandaise sauce
Adds richness and fat, coating the fish with a creamy, tangy finish.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, helping the fish brown and stay moist under heat.

The step that matters

Turn the trouts and cook until nicely browned. Broiling from one side only can leave the fish dry or unevenly cooked. Turning it gives even heat and a golden surface, while the flesh stays moist as it cooks through.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, sauce, parsley):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sauce, parsley. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes