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Boiled Bass, Rock Fish, Etc

A boiled bass or rock fish served with drawn butter mixed with finely chopped boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 Bass, Rock Fish, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the fish plain, leaving the head and tail on.

  2. Cook steadily for 30 minutes.

  3. For the sauce, mix drawn butter with 2 finely chopped 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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 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

Bass or rock fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in water until it turns flaky and opaque.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the fish and carrying the flavour of the sauce.
Boiled eggs
Provide a soft, creamy texture and body to the butter sauce.

The step that matters

Cook steadily for 30 minutes. Keeping the water at a steady simmer rather than a hard rolling boil cooks the fish evenly and helps keep its flesh tender and intact instead of breaking apart.

“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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