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To Boil Rock-fish, Black-fish, Jind Sea- Bass

A boiled fish served with hard‑boiled eggs and optional sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and celery work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 353 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

To Boil Rock-fish, Black-fish, Jind Sea- Bass

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly, especially the backbone.

  2. Place the fish in a fish kettle and cover it with cold water.

  3. Add a handful of coarse sea salt and a pinch of saltpetre, if using.

Cook

  1. Heat over moderate fire and skim off any scum that forms.

  2. Let it boil gently until cooked through.

  3. Drain the fish and serve garnished with halved hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Accompany with celery sauce, anchovy sauce, or melted butter.

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. Fish + celerytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

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

  3. Egg + celerytop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

The step that matters

Boil gently until cooked through. Vigorous boiling breaks up the delicate flesh of a whole fish and can make it dry or ragged. A gentle simmer cooks the protein evenly and keeps the fish moist and intact.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg. 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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