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Dessert

Dorade a LA Sauce Blanche

A lightly boiled John Dory served with parsley, lemon slices, and Hollandaise or melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Dorade a LA Sauce Blanche

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add coarse sea salt.

  2. Add the John Dory fish and boil for 2 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let it simmer gently for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on size.

  4. Serve the fish on a fish strainer, garnished with parsley and lemon slices.

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. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

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

  4. Fish + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,487 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

John dory fish
The main protein; gentle heat firms its delicate flesh so it flakes cleanly.
Hollandaise sauce
Adds richness and fat, and its emulsified butter and egg yolk give a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Keeping the water at a gentle simmer. Once the fish is out of the initial boil, a hard boil would agitate the delicate flesh and make it break apart. A gentle simmer cooks the fish evenly 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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