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Boiled Fish

A simple boiled fish dish using small fish, salt, lemon juice or vinegar, and muslin to keep the fish intact.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,889 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring enough water to a boil to cover the fish.

  2. Add salt and lemon juice or vinegar to the boiling water.

Cook

  1. Tie the fish in a piece of muslin to prevent it from breaking.

  2. Cook the fish whole in the boiling water until done.

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. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Small fish
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish and water.

The step that matters

Cook the fish whole in the boiling water until done. Fish protein sets quickly and turns dry and tough if overcooked, so check for flaking and opaque flesh before removing it. The muslin keeps the fish intact while it firms.

“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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