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Boiled Red Snapper, Shrimp Sauce

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Clove and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Boiled Red Snapper, Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the cleaned fish in cold water until ready to cook.

  2. In a fish kettle, bring water or stock to a boil with salt, bay leaf, onion, parsley, and vinegar.

  3. Add the fish and cook for about 16 minutes at a simmer.

  4. Remove the fish and peel off the skin from the upper side.

  5. Serve small portions on plates with shrimp sauce and a spoonful of mashed potatoes.

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. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (snapper, vinegar, onion, parsley, butter, flour, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against snapper, vinegar, onion, parsley, butter, flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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