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Boiled Ray with Piquante Sauce

A boiled ray served with a vinegar-based piquante sauce of pickles, capers, onion, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Ray with Piquante Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the ray

  1. Clean and wash the ray.

  2. Place the ray in a pot with enough cold water to cover it, along with 2 tablespoons of salt, sliced lemon, onion with cloves, a bouquet of herbs, and ½ cup vinegar.

  3. Bring the water to a gentle boil and cook for 15 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. While the fish is cooking, heat the chopped pickle, capers, and onion with ½ cup vinegar until the vinegar evaporates.

  2. Add 1 ounce of butter and 1 ounce of flour to the sauce, stirring until combined.

  3. Season the sauce with 1 teaspoon of salt, ¼ teaspoon of pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Carefully remove the fish from the pot and peel off the skin without breaking it.

  2. Pour the sauce 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ray
The main ingredient, poached gently in seasoned water until cooked through.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce and helps carry its flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the sauce its bright, piquant edge.
Capers
Add briny, sharp flavour to the sauce.
Pickle
Adds tangy, sour notes that give the sauce its piquant character.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the sauce. Flour clumps when added to hot liquid unless it is stirred in steadily. Its starch thickens the sauce as it heats, so keep the sauce moving until it is smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, lemon, vinegar, capers, flour, pepper):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Kalebetter flavor fit
  3. Arrowrootbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, lemon, vinegar, capers, flour, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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