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To Boil Fresh Fish

A simple boiled fish dish seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley, and served with butter and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Boil Fresh Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the fish well in salted cold water.

  2. Sprinkle the fish with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Tie the fish in a clean cloth with a sprig of parsley.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the fish with cold water, using lukewarm water for salmon to preserve color.

  2. Cook a two-pound fish for twenty minutes.

  3. Serve with drawn butter mixed with finely chopped hard-boiled eggs.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Fish + salmontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh fish
Gentle cooking in water sets the flesh evenly while keeping it moist and tender.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the mild fish.
Hard-boiled eggs
Give the butter sauce body and a soft, rich texture.

The step that matters

Cooking time for the fish. Fish proteins set and toughen as they heat, so overcooking makes the flesh dry and firm. The twenty-minute time in the record is tied to a two-pound fish.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, salmon, butter, egg):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Dillfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, salmon, butter, egg. 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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