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For Boiled Fish

A simple boiled fish prepared with tarragon vinegar, onion, parsley, and a broth served over bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

For Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Combine 1 quart of cold water and 1 tablespoon of salt in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the fish, tarragon vinegar, onion, and parsley to the boiling water.

  4. Season the broth with pepper.

  5. Add a pinch of flour to the broth.

  6. Boil for about 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish with slices of bread.

  2. Pour the broth over the bread in a separate dish.

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. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Tarragon vinegar
Adds a sharp acidic note that brightens the mild broth and fish.
Flour
A pinch lightly thickens the broth so it feels slightly more body.
Fish
The main protein, which cooks gently in the simmering broth until flaky.

The step that matters

Boil for about 10 minutes. Boiling too hard can break the fish apart and make the broth cloudy, while too short a simmer leaves the fish undercooked. Keep the liquid at a steady gentle boil so the fish cooks through and stays intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, tarragon, vinegar, parsley, pepper, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, tarragon, vinegar, parsley, pepper, flour. 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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