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Loiled White Fish

A whole white fish cooked in boiling water with vinegar or lemon juice, served with drawn butter, parsley, and egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Loiled White Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dress the fish nicely.

Poach the fish

  1. Cover the fish in a fish kettle with boiling water seasoned with coarse sea salt.

  2. Remove the scum as it rises and simmer for 8 to 10 minutes per pound.

  3. When about half done, add vinegar or lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Take out the fish, drain it, and dish it carefully.

  2. Pour drawn butter over the fish or garnish with parsley and serve with egg sauce.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

White fish
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it poaches.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the mild fish.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the mild, lean fish.

The step that matters

Simmer, don't boil, after adding the fish. Vigorous boiling breaks up the delicate flakes and toughens the protein, so the fish looks ragged and dries out. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer cooks it evenly while the flesh stays moist and intact.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar, butter, egg, sauce. 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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