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Boiled Fish— French Style

A boiled fish dish flavored with carrots, onion, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,563 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Boiled Fish— French Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and wash the fish, removing the gills and fins while preserving the tail.

Poach

  1. Place the fish in a kettle with a grate at the bottom.

  2. Add the carrots, onion, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns, and enough water to cover the fish.

  3. Heat until boiling, then reduce to a simmer for about 1 hour.

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. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Fish + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,924 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in simmering liquid to become flaky and tender.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor to the cooking liquid as it simmers.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Reduce to a simmer after boiling. Holding the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a rolling boil cooks the fish evenly and keeps its delicate flesh from breaking apart and turning tough.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, bluefish, salmon, onion, thyme):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bluefish, salmon, onion, thyme. 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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