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Broilbd Whitings

Broiled whitings served with a sauce of butter, flour, green shallots, pepper, salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Broilbd Whitings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brine

  1. Make a brine with coarse sea salt, water, parsley, shallots, and onion.

  2. Boil the brine for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the brine.

Poach the whitings

  1. Boil the whitings in the brine, adding ⅓ cup of milk.

  2. Drain the whitings when done.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a pan, melt butter and add flour, stirring to combine.

  2. Add the whole green shallots, pepper, and salt.

  3. Thicken with cream.

  4. Remove the shallots.

  5. Pour the sauce over the whitings.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter and liquids into a smooth, body-giving sauce base.
Butter
Carries flavor and forms the base of the thickened sauce with flour.
Cream
Adds richness and body, thickening the sauce and softening its flavor.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the whitings as they poach.
2 whole green shallots
Infuse the sauce with a mild, savory aroma, then are removed.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Stirring the flour into melted butter before adding liquid helps prevent lumps. Adding cream gently over moderate heat, rather than boiling it hard, keeps the sauce smooth and stops the cream from splitting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, shallot, milk, butter, flour, pepper, cream):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, shallot, milk, butter, flour, pepper, cream. 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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