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Broiled Fish, Boiled Fish. Fried Fish. Baked Fish. Flaked Fish.

A fish dish prepared by broiling, boiling, frying, baking, or flaking, using salt pork, parsley, egg, butter, vinegar, flour, salt, pepper, water, and Indian meal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Broiled Fish, Boiled Fish. Fried Fish. Baked Fish. Flaked Fish.

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the fish by cleaning and gutting them.

  2. Season the fish with salt and pepper.

Cook the fish

  1. Place the seasoned fish on a broiler.

  2. Place the fish in a pot of salted water.

  3. Bring the pot to a boil.

  4. Heat butter in a pan.

  5. Coat the fish in flour.

  6. Fry the fish until golden brown.

  7. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  8. Season the fish.

  9. Bake the fish until cooked through.

  10. Cook the fish.

  11. Flake the cooked fish with a fork.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pan-fish
The main ingredient, cooked by broiling, boiling, frying or baking.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the coated fish brown when fried.
Flour
Coats the fish so the surface browns and crisps when fried.
Egg
Helps bind the coating to the fish.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pork, egg, butter, vinegar, flour, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pork, egg, butter, vinegar, flour, pepper. 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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