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 Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Wash the fish and wrap it in a cloth.
Place the wrapped fish in a pan of hot water.
Add 2 teaspoons of coarse sea salt to the water.
Maintain a slow movement of the water and cook for about 35 minutes.
Once done, remove the cloth and serve with drawn butter.
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.
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Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,488 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fish
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently to stay moist and tender in hot water.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the cooking water so the fish is lightly flavoured as it poaches.
- Drawn butter
- Adds richness and fat to the served fish, balancing its lean flesh.
The step that matters
Maintain a slow movement of the water. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil cooks the fish evenly and helps prevent the delicate flesh from breaking apart or toughening.
“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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