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Boiled Halibut

Boiled halibut served with lemon, parsley, and fish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Halibut

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, bring enough water to a boil to cover the halibut.

  2. Add salt and vinegar to the boiling water.

  3. Carefully add the halibut and let the water return to a boil. Skim off any foam, then reduce heat and cook slowly for 25 minutes.

  4. Serve the halibut on a hot napkin, garnished with lemon and parsley, alongside a fish sauce.

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. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Vinegar + fish saucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together227 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + fish saucetop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Forms the main body of the dish; gentle simmering cooks its flesh until it turns opaque and flakes.
Vinegar
Adds a light acidity that brightens the mild flavour of the fish.
Fish sauce
Adds a savoury, salty depth to the plain boiled fish when served alongside.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam, then reduce heat and cook slowly. Foam that forms as the water returns to a boil can cloud the broth and cling to the fish. Lowering the heat keeps the water at a gentle simmer, so the fish cooks evenly and stays tender rather than tightening and breaking apart.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Mangofits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, parsley, fish sauce. 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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