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Boiled Fish

A lightly floured fish is boiled in salted water and served with lemon, parsley, and drawn butter or fish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Boiled Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Dredge the fish lightly with flour.

  2. Wrap and secure the fish firmly in a cloth.

Boil and drain

  1. Place the wrapped fish in a kettle and cover with slightly salted boiling water.

  2. Boil the fish for about 30 minutes until the flesh flakes easily.

  3. Remove the fish from the kettle, take off the cloth, and drain well.

Serve

  1. Lay the fish on a folded napkin on a hot platter.

  2. Garnish with lemon points and parsley sprigs.

  3. Serve with drawn butter or fish sauce.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Fish
Cooks gently in simmering water, turning flaky and moist when the flesh separates easily.
Flour
Lightly coats the fish, helping the surface stay intact during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil the fish for about 30 minutes until the flesh flakes easily. Boiling too hard or too long can toughen and dry the flesh, while undercooking leaves it translucent near the bone. Checking that the flesh flakes easily shows it is cooked through.

“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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