Why it works: Fish and roe work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓
Boiled Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the fish
Put the fish into enough boiling water to cover it by about an inch.
Add the salt and vinegar to the water.
Simmer steadily until the fish is cooked through.
Carefully remove the fish and the cloth.
Serve
Place the fish in a hot dish and pour a hot fish sauce over it, or serve the sauce separately.
Prepare and boil the roes
To boil the roes, wash and wipe them with a soft cloth.
Place the roes inside the fish, tied with thread or twine, and boil as above, or boil them separately wrapped in a cloth.
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.
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Fish + roetop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together118 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Vinegar + roetop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together136 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
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Fish + vinegartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,036 recipes
Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fish
- Forms the main body of the dish and becomes flaky and tender as it cooks.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the cooking water and lightly flavours the flesh of the fish.
- Vinegar
- Adds a mild acidity to the cooking water, brightening the flavour of the fish.
The step that matters
Simmer steadily until the fish is cooked through. Boiling vigorously can break the flesh apart, while cooking too briefly leaves the centre underdone. A steady simmer cooks the protein evenly and keeps the fish intact.
“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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