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Boiled Halibut

A simple boiled halibut with carrot, onion, leek, celery, herbs, vinegar, peppercorns, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Boiled Halibut

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the halibut in a saucepan and cover it with fresh cold water.

  2. Add the sliced carrot, onion, leek, and celery.

  3. Include the herbs, peppercorns, salt, and vinegar.

  4. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the halibut is cooked through.

  5. Garnish as 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Leek + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Is the main protein, which turns firm and flaky as it cooks through in the poaching liquid.
Vinegar
Adds a light acidity that brightens the flavour of the poaching liquid and the fish.
Carrot, onion, leek, and celery
Flavour the poaching liquid with sweetness and aromatic depth as they simmer.

The step that matters

Simmer gently once the liquid boils. After bringing the liquid to a boil, reducing the heat to a gentle simmer keeps the fish tender. A hard boil can toughen the proteins and break the fish apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, leek, celery, thyme, parsley, vinegar):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, leek, celery, thyme, parsley, vinegar. 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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