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Boiled Fish

A simple boiled fish served with a white sauce of butter, flour, egg yolks, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Place the fish in a large pot with enough cold water to cover it and add plenty of coarse sea salt.

  2. Bring the water to a boil.

  3. Remove the pot from heat.

  4. Let the fish drain, covered, over the water until ready to serve.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add salt and white pepper to taste.

  4. Gradually stir in the boiling water.

  5. Cook until thickened.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Stir in the beaten egg yolks mixed with the lemon juice.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, cooked gently in salted water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and water.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and give it a smooth, creamy body when stirred in off heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks scramble if they meet high heat, leaving the sauce grainy. Removing the pan from heat before stirring them in lets the yolks thicken gently and smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, egg, lemon):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, egg, lemon. 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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