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Sheepshead with Drawn Butter

A steamed sheepshead fish served with a butter sauce made from flour, lemon, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sheepshead with Drawn Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and steam the fish

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly and rub a little coarse sea salt over it.

  2. Wrap the fish in a cloth and place it in a steamer over a pot of fast-boiling water.

  3. Steam the fish for one hour.

Make the drawn butter

  1. For the drawn butter, roll the butter into small balls and dredge with flour.

  2. In a saucepan, melt one-fourth of the butter balls while whisking.

  3. Add the remaining butter balls one at a time until smooth.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Transfer the fish to a hot serving dish and garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

  2. Pour the sauce into a hot sauce boat and serve.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Sheepshead fish
Provides the main protein, which cooks through gently during steaming.
Butter
Forms the rich base of the sauce and gives it smooth, silky body.
All-purpose flour
Coats the butter balls so they melt into the sauce and help thicken it.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the butter balls gradually. Butter emulsifies smoothly only when added in small pieces while whisking over gentle heat. Adding it all at once or over high heat can cause the sauce to separate or turn greasy.

“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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