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To Boil the John Dory

Boiled John Dory served with parsley, lemon slices, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

To Boil the John Dory

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and poach

  1. Prepare the fish as you would a turbot.

  2. In a large pot, combine water and salt. Bring the water to a boil.

  3. Add the fish and let it simmer for about 45 minutes, adjusting time based on the size of the fish.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish in a neatly folded napkin, garnished with curled parsley and lemon slices.

  2. Serve with lobster sauce, shrimp sauce, or melted butter in a tureen.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

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

  3. Fish + lobstertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together326 recipes

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

  4. Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + lobstertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

John dory fish
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it poaches.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is flavoured as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding the fish and simmering. Once the water is boiling, the fish should cook at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil. Vigorous boiling can break up the delicate flesh and toughen it, so keep the bubbling gentle and adjust the time to the fish's size.

“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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