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To Boil Fish

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Boil Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine water, onion, celery, carrot, salt, peppercorns, cloves, bay leaf, vinegar, and sweet herbs. Boil covered for 30 minutes.

  2. Prepare the fish by carefully handling it to avoid breaking.

  3. Add the fish to the scalding hot court bouillon and cook for 30 minutes.

  4. Serve the boiled fish with your choice of sauce, ensuring it is thick enough to cling to the fish.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, carrot, clove, vinegar, cheese):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, carrot, clove, vinegar, cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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