Why it works: Parsley and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓
To Boil Perch
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wipe or wash the perch to remove slime.
Scrape off the scales and clean the insides thoroughly. Remove the gills and cut off the fins.
Boil
Place the perch in equal parts of cold and boiling water, salted as for mackerel.
Boil for 8 to 10 minutes, or 12 to 15 minutes for larger fish.
Serve
Serve on a napkin, garnished with curled parsley, and with melted butter or maître d'hôtel sauce.
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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Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together28,563 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Perch
- The main fish, which the gentle boiling cooks until its flesh turns opaque and flakes.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the cooking water so the fish is flavoured from the outside as it cooks.
The step that matters
Keep the water at a gentle boil for the stated time. Boiling for too long toughens and dries the delicate flesh, while too short a time leaves it undercooked near the bone. Larger fish need the longer time.
“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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