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Boiled Skate

A boiled skate fillet seasoned with herbs, carrot, onion, celery, peppercorns, and French vinegar, served with black butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Boiled Skate

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the skate

  1. Roll the pieces of skate into rounds or shape them like the letter S, then secure with a trussing needle and string.

  2. Soak the skate in well-salted cold water for about an hour, then wash and rinse well.

Poach

  1. Place the skate in a stewpan and cover with water.

  2. Tie the onion, carrot, celery, herbs, and peppercorns in a piece of muslin and add to the pan.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of salt and 1 tablespoon of French vinegar for every quart of water.

  4. Bring to a boil, skim well, and let it simmer for five minutes until the fish is cooked.

Serve

  1. Carefully lift the fish out, arrange it on a hot dish, cut the strings, and gently remove them.

  2. Pour black butter over the fish and serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Skate
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the poaching liquid.
French vinegar
Adds a light acidity to the poaching liquid, brightening the mild flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after skimming. Once the liquid boils, it should be kept at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil. Vigorous boiling can break the delicate flesh into flakes and make it tough, so the fish stays intact and moist.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, celery, vinegar, butter):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, celery, vinegar, butter. 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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