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Fish a LA Brunswick

A fish dish cooked in vinegar and onion, finished with a mustard‑egg yolk sauce and assorted chopped herbs and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish a LA Brunswick

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Cook the fish in salt water until done, adding vinegar, onion, celery root, and parsley.

  2. Remove the fish from the heat and let it sit in the cooking liquid.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, rub the hard‑boiled yolks with the raw yolks.

  2. Add mustard, salt, pepper, butter, vinegar, and lemon juice to the yolk mixture.

  3. Finely chop parsley, green onions, capers, shallots, pickle, and tarragon; mix into the yolk mixture.

  4. Chop the hard‑boiled egg whites separately and add to the sauce; mix thoroughly and taste for seasoning.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Emulsify with butter and vinegar to give the sauce a smooth, thick body.
Hard-boiled eggs
Mashed yolks and chopped whites add richness and body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the rich yolks and butter.
Sweet butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, mellow texture.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsified egg yolk sauce.
Fish
Main protein, cooked gently in the seasoned liquid so it stays moist.

The step that matters

Emulsifying the yolks with the butter and vinegar. Adding fat and acid too quickly or unevenly can split the egg yolk base, leaving a greasy, grainy sauce. Working the yolks smooth first and adding ingredients gradually helps the emulsion hold.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, salmon, vinegar, celery, parsley, egg, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, salmon, vinegar, celery, parsley, egg, mustard. 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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