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Broiled Fish

Broiled fish with oil or salt pork, seasoned with salt, pepper, flour, and served with potatoes, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Broiled Fish

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the broiler.

  2. Place a fish sheet in a dripping pan to heat.

  3. Brush the fish with oil or rub with salt pork.

  4. Place the fish on the sheet, skin side down, with backbone, head, tail, and fins removed.

  5. Brush the fish with oil or melted butter, then dust with salt, pepper, and lightly with flour.

Broil and serve

  1. Put the fish in the broiling oven, close the door, and baste once or twice with the hot water mixed with lemon juice and butter.

  2. Broil for 15 to 25 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish.

  3. Serve garnished with Saratoga or lattice potatoes, parsley, and lemon points.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  5. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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 through under direct heat to become flaky and opaque.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps the skin brown and form a light crust during broiling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown as it melts over the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the basting liquid and the fish.

The step that matters

Broiling time by thickness. Broiling heat is intense and close to the element, so a thick fish can char outside before the centre is cooked. Matching the time to thickness, and basting to keep the surface moist, helps the flesh cook evenly.

“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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