Skip to main content
Main

Boiled White Fish

A whole white fish boiled with salt, served with a butter‑flour gravy and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled White Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Lay the fish open and place it in a dripping pan with the back down.

  2. Nearly cover the fish with water and add the salt.

  3. Cover tightly and simmer (do not boil) for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Dress the fish with gravy, butter, and pepper, and garnish with sliced eggs.

  2. For the sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and stir for a minute.

  3. Gradually add the boiling water, stirring until thickened.

  4. Add the diced hard boiled eggs to the sauce and serve.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour 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

White fish
Is the main dish, cooked gently in water so it stays moist and tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce and the dressed fish.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and hot water.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and savory richness to the sauce and garnish the fish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, do not boil, for 30 minutes. Hard boiling agitates and toughens delicate fish flesh and can break it apart. A gentle simmer with the pan covered cooks the fish evenly and keeps it moist and tender.

“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

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes