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To Broil Fish

A simple broiled fish dish seasoned with salt, pepper, flour, butter, mustard, vinegar, and Cornubian sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Broil Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fish into portions as you would for frying.

  2. Season the fish pieces with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Coat the fish with a generous amount of flour.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the fish over bright, clear embers until cooked through.

  2. Rub a good amount of butter on the fish before serving.

  3. Serve with mustard, vinegar, Cornubian sauce, and plain melted butter if desired.

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. Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms a light coating on the fish that helps it brown and holds seasoning.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and keeping the fish moist.
Large codfish, ling, halibut, haddocks, pollack, or bass
Firm white fish whose flesh holds together and flakes when broiled.

The step that matters

Broil the fish over bright, clear embers until cooked through. Fish cooks quickly and dries out if overdone, so it should be checked for flakiness and removed as soon as the flesh turns opaque and separates easily.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, flour, pepper, butter, vinegar, sauce):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, flour, pepper, butter, vinegar, 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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