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Boiled Smelts

Smelts boiled in fish stock with butter, parsley, lemon, pepper, served with fried bread croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the smelts by removing the gills.

  2. Wash and wipe them well.

  3. Arrange the smelts on their stomachs on a fish drainer.

Poach

  1. Place them in a stewpan and cover with fish stock.

  2. Bring almost to a boil, then reduce heat and let them sit for five minutes without boiling.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
Provide the delicate fish that is gently cooked by poaching in the stock.
Fish stock
Poaches the smelts gently, adding moisture and savoury flavour to the fish.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished fish, carrying flavour across the plate.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild, rich flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Keep the stock below a boil. Once the stock reaches a hard boil, the delicate smelt flesh toughens and can break apart. Holding it just under the boil poaches the fish gently and keeps it moist and intact.

“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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