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To Boil Halibut

A boiled halibut served with horseradish, parsley, egg sauce, and optional seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Boil Halibut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Score the skin of the halibut deeply.

  2. Place the halibut in a kettle on a strainer with the skin side down.

  3. Cover the fish with cold water and add a handful of coarse sea salt.

Poach

  1. Heat slowly; do not let it boil too fast.

  2. Skim the surface carefully.

  3. Once it has boiled hard for a few minutes, reduce the heat to let it simmer for 25 to 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Drain the halibut and serve garnished with grated horseradish and curled parsley, alongside a boat of egg sauce.

  2. For leftovers, mince the cold halibut and season with salt, cayenne, sweet oil, hard-boiled egg yolk, and vinegar.

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. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Horseradish + saucetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together775 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Forms the main body of the dish; poaching firms its flesh into flakes.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is flavoured through its cooking liquid.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the leftover minced fish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the leftover minced fish.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a gentle simmer. Boiling the water hard toughens the delicate fish and can break it apart. Heating slowly and keeping a steady, gentle simmer cooks the flesh evenly while keeping it moist and tender.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, egg, sauce, vinegar. 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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