Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Fish

A whole fish boiled in salted water, served with a creamy egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly, rubbing the inside with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. If you don't have a fish kettle, bend the fish, wrap it in a cloth, and lay it on a plate in the water.

Poach the fish

  1. Place the fish in a fish kettle filled with salt water and simmer for 8 to 10 minutes per pound.

  2. When the fish is halfway done, add vinegar or lemon juice.

  3. Once cooked, drain the fish carefully and serve with egg cream sauce.

Make the egg cream sauce

  1. For the sauce, thicken 1 pint of milk with 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Season the sauce with salt and paprika, then stir in 2-3 finely chopped hard boiled eggs.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 by simmering in salt water.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it is heated.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the sauce and helps form the thickened base with flour.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and texture to the sauce as finely chopped pieces.

The step that matters

Simmering the fish gently. Simmering rather than boiling cooks the fish evenly and keeps its flesh tender and moist. Vigorous boiling can break up the fish and toughen the protein.

“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.

More boiled fish recipes

Sauce for 18Egg Sauce for 7with Sauce 5Plain Sauce for 5Butter Sauce for 4Slices 3 See all 210 →

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes