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Sheepshead with Drawn Butter

A steamed sheepshead served with a lemon‑parsley butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 the fish

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

  2. Wrap the fish in a cloth.

Steam and serve the fish

  1. Place it in a steamer over fast-boiling water and steam the fish for one hour.

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

Make the drawn butter

  1. Roll the butter into small balls and dredge the butter balls with flour.

  2. In a saucepan, melt one-fourth of the butter balls while whisking, then add the remaining butter balls one at a time until smooth.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice and chopped parsley.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 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
The main protein, which cooks gently by steaming to stay moist and tender.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, forming a smooth, flavorful sauce when melted.
Flour
Coats the butter balls so they melt into a smooth, thickened sauce without separating.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the remaining butter balls one at a time. Adding butter gradually while whisking lets each addition melt and emulsify into a smooth sauce. Adding it all at once can cause the sauce to become greasy or lumpy.

“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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