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Boiled White Fish

A boiled white fish served with gravy, butter, pepper, and sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled White Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Lay the fish open and place it in a dripping pan, back side down.

  2. Nearly cover the fish with water and add 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt.

  3. Cover tightly and simmer (do not boil) for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Dress the fish with gravy, butter, and pepper, and garnish with sliced eggs.

  2. For the sauce, melt a piece of butter the size of an egg in a pan.

  3. Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour and cook for a minute.

  4. Gradually add ½ pint of boiling water, stirring constantly until thickened.

  5. Add 3 sliced hard boiled eggs to the sauce and serve.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

White fish
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently in salted water until flaky.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water mixture into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce and finished fish.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and a mild, creamy richness to the garnish and the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the fish without boiling. Gentle simmering cooks the fish evenly and keeps its flesh tender and moist. A rolling boil toughens and breaks up the delicate protein, so the fish comes out dry and ragged.

“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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