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Crab and Salad

A boiled fish (brill) seasoned with lemon juice and coarse sea salt, served as a simple salad.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,889 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Crab and Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and clean the brill thoroughly.

  2. Dry the fish with a cloth and rub it with lemon juice and a little coarse sea salt.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the fish in a kettle and cover it with water.

  2. Add a handful of coarse sea salt and bring the water to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, reduce the heat and let it simmer for about 30 minutes, depending on the size of the fish.

  4. Skim the water and gently remove the fish using a drainer.

  5. Carefully slide the fish onto a dish covered with a folded napkin and garnish as desired.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brill
Is the main protein, cooked gently by simmering in salted water until it turns flaky.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that lift the mild flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Simmering at a gentle heat. Once the water boils, reducing the heat to a simmer keeps the fish tender. A hard boil agitates the flesh and can break it apart and toughen the proteins.

“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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