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Boiled Plaice

A boiled fish dish of plaice or brill seasoned with vinegar and salt, finished with butter and garnished with lemon and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 Plaice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the fish and trim off the fins.

  2. Rub the fish with lemon juice.

Poach

  1. Place the fish in a fish kettle and cover with water, adding salt and vinegar.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let it simmer gently until cooked, about 10 minutes for a small fish.

Finish and serve

  1. Lift the fish out, drain, and brush with oiled butter.

  2. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with parsley and lemon.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Plaice or brill
Provides the firm white flesh that is poached whole in the liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the poaching liquid, helping the fish keep its shape and flavour bright.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the cooked fish when brushed on at the end.

The step that matters

Simmering gently. A gentle simmer cooks the fish evenly without boiling it hard. Vigorous boiling can break up the delicate flesh and make it tough and flaky in the wrong way.

“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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