Skip to main content
Main

Pomfret Fillets

A fish dish of pomfret fillets coated in egg, parsley, and a butter‑flour sauce with lime.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 547 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pomfret Fillets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Egg one side of the pomfret fillets.

  2. Sprinkle minced parsley over the egged side.

  3. Simmer the fillets, rolled and skewered, in seasoned broth until cooked.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a small saucepan, add flour, and moisten with broth.

  2. Stir in chopped parsley and remove from heat.

  3. Beat egg yolk with lime juice and mix into the sauce.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fillets and serve.

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. Parsley + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together547 recipes

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

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour 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

Pomfret fillets
Provide the delicate white fish that is the main component of the dish.
Egg
Binds the parsley to the fish surface and helps it set when cooked.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour through its fat.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolk
Thickens and enriches the sauce, giving it a silky body.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the egg yolk into the sauce. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot when it goes in. Add it gradually off the heat, so it thickens smoothly instead of turning grainy.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, parsley, butter, flour. 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.

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes