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Skate with Brown Butter

Skate served with a browned butter sauce flavored with vinegar and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Skate with Brown Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Prepare the skate as directed in the recipe for Skate Boiled.

  2. Serve the skate on a hot dish without a napkin.

Make the brown butter

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan until it turns nut-brown.

  2. Add the vinegar and chopped parsley to the browned butter.

  3. Pour the hot butter mixture over the fish.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with sprigs of parsley 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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  3. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Skate
The main fish, mild and flaky, carrying the sauce.
Fresh butter
Provides fat and, when browned, a nutty flavour from toasted milk solids.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Browning the butter. Butter moves from nut-brown to burnt within moments, because its milk solids darken quickly once the water has cooked off. Watching closely and stopping at nut-brown gives a nutty flavour rather than a bitter, scorched one.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar. 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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