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Steamed Fish

A whole fish steamed with salt, lemon, and served with potatoes, parsley, lemon slices, hard‑boiled egg, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Steamed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and steam

  1. Rub the fish with coarse sea salt and lemon juice.

  2. Place the fish in a steamer over boiling water.

  3. Steam for about 20 minutes for moderate-sized fish, longer for larger ones.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish on a platter with a folded napkin underneath.

  2. Pile Saratoga potatoes around the fish and garnish with parsley, lemon slices, and hard boiled egg.

  3. Serve a sauce in a sauce boat alongside.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + potatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Fish + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Whole fish
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it steams.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Steam for about 20 minutes. Fish is done as soon as its flesh turns opaque and flakes easily. Overcooking dries it out and toughens the texture, while larger fish need more time to cook through at the centre.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lemon, parsley, 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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