Skip to main content
Main

Steamed Fish for Ah Invalid

Steamed fish served with butter and optional lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Steamed Fish for Ah Invalid

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter two plates well.

  2. Fillet the fish and lay it on one plate.

  3. Sprinkle a little salt over the fish and cover it with the other plate.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam over the saucepan of boiling water for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillets.

  2. Add a sprinkling of lemon juice if 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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  2. Whiting + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Whiting + lemontop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together238 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

Whiting, plaice, or sole
Provides the delicate white flesh that becomes moist and flaky when gently steamed.
Butter
Adds richness and helps keep the fish from sticking to the plates while it steams.

The step that matters

Steaming for 15 to 20 minutes. Fish cooks quickly and becomes dry and rubbery if overcooked. Thickness of the fillets determines the time, so thinner pieces need to be checked toward the shorter end to stay tender and moist.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes