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Steamed Fish

A fish fillet steamed with salt, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and optional vinegar, served with a simple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Steamed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin and fillet the fish, then wash it in saltwater mixed with a little vinegar or lemon juice.

  2. Wipe the fish dry and cut it into fillet shapes or halves.

  3. Place the fish in a greased pie dish and sprinkle with salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the dish with well-greased paper and place it in a tin of water.

  2. Steam for 10 to 12 minutes.

  3. Transfer the fish to a hot dish.

  4. Prepare a sauce by mixing salt, cayenne, and lemon juice, then pour it over the fish and serve hot.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Mullet or bream
Forms the flaky, delicate body of the dish once steamed.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish and sauce.

The step that matters

Steaming for 10 to 12 minutes. Steam cooks the fish gently and evenly. Overcooking dries out the delicate flesh and makes it tough, so the fish should be removed once it turns opaque and flakes easily.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar. 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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