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To Boil Whitings

A simple boiled fish dish using whitings, salt, bay leaves, parsley, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Whiting and parsley work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 330 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Boil Whitings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape, cleanse, and wipe the whitings.

  2. Place them in boiling water.

Cook and serve

  1. Add salt, bay leaves, and tied parsley.

  2. Simmer the fish for 5 to 10 minutes, watching closely to avoid overcooking.

  3. Serve with parsley and butter, using the cooking liquid.

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. Whiting + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together330 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

Whitings
Provide the flaky white fish that is the main component of the dish.
Bay leaves
Add a subtle aromatic flavour to the poaching liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer the fish for 5 to 10 minutes. Fish proteins set and toughen when overcooked, turning dry and firm, so the fish should be watched closely and removed as soon as it is opaque and cooked through.

“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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