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Fish

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Trim the fish into fillets and season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Cover the bottom of a tin with onion slices and dot with peppercorns and cloves.

  3. Layer the fish fillets over the onions and sprinkle with black pepper.

  4. Add a layer of sliced tomatoes and sprinkle with chopped curled parsley and parsley roots.

  5. Pour in fish broth and white wine, then cover the tin tightly and steam.

  6. Optionally, add garlic and lemon rind for flavor.

  7. For a bouillabaisse-like effect, use multiple types of fish, saffron, salad oil, and additional broth.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  3. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, onion, clove, tomato, parsley, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, onion, clove, tomato, parsley, white wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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