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Brill

A simple simmered fish dish using lemon, salt, vinegar, and warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Brill

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the brill and cut off the fins.

  2. Rub the fish with a little lemon juice to preserve its whiteness.

Poach and serve

  1. Barely cover the fish with warm water and add salt and vinegar.

  2. Simmer gently until done, about 10 to 15 minutes for a small fish.

  3. Garnish with cut lemon and parsley, and serve with your choice of sauce.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Brill
Firm white flesh that holds together and flakes when poached gently.
Lemon juice
Rubbed on the fish to help keep its flesh looking white.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until done. Fish proteins toughen and dry out when simmered hard or too long, so a gentle simmer that just barely moves the water keeps the flesh 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.

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