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Menu for a Party of Eight

Rolled pomfret fillets served with a white sauce made from fish broth, butter, flour, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Menu for a Party of Eight

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Boil the bones and trimmings with onion, carrot, celery, parsley, and salt in water.

  2. Spread the fillets on a board and brush one side with beaten egg.

  3. Sprinkle minced parsley, cooked onion, mushroom, and white pepper over the fillets.

  4. Roll up the fillets and secure with small skewers.

Poach and make the sauce

  1. Strain the broth from the boiled bones and trimmings, add wine, and simmer the fillets for 12-14 minutes.

  2. Remove the fillets, take out the skewers, and place them on a hot dish.

  3. Melt butter in a saucepan, stir in flour, salt, and sugar, then moisten with fish broth to make a white sauce.

  4. Off the heat, add egg yolk, anchovy vinegar, chopped parsley, marjoram, and garden cress to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fillets and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Pomfret fillets
Provide the delicate white fish that is poached and served.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a smooth white sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and adds body and richness when stirred in off the heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and forms its base with the flour.
Beaten egg
Brushed on the fillets to help the minced toppings adhere before rolling.
Chablis or sauterne
Adds acidity and aroma to the poaching liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat and can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from the heat before stirring it in keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, celery, parsley, egg, mushroom, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, celery, parsley, egg, mushroom, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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