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Boiled White Fish

A whole white fish is boiled in salted water and served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,469 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Boiled White Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sew the fish in a cheesecloth bag, leaving room for it to swell.

  2. Place the fish in a kettle with the back down.

Boil

  1. Cover the fish with boiling salted water, using 1 tablespoon of salt and vinegar or lemon juice for each quart of water.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes; if the fish weighs over 2 lbs, boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Transfer the fish to a cooker and let it sit for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Peel the skin off the boiled fish and serve with tomato 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. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Fish + tomatotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hepten-3-one (metal).

  3. Vinegar + tomatotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Fish + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,487 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Fish + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in simmering salted water until it turns opaque and flaky.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and water, and helps firm the flesh during poaching.

The step that matters

Keeping the water at a boil while adding the fish. Adding the fish to properly boiling water helps it cook evenly and keeps the flesh from becoming tough or falling apart. Letting the cooking time run too long can dry out the fish.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar, sauce. 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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