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Boiling Fish

A method of boiling fish of various sizes, served with liver, horseradish garnish, and oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and oyster work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 496 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiling Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the fish

  1. Boil the fish gently until done, 30 minutes for large, 20 minutes for medium, and 15 minutes for small fish, starting from when it begins to boil.

  2. Serve the fish with the liver and garnish with scraped horseradish.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. For oyster sauce, remove oysters one by one into a bowl, letting the liquor settle, then pour it off into the bowl with the oysters through a sieve.

  2. Let the liquor settle again, then transfer the oysters to a clean bowl, straining the liquor over them.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the oysters and liquor, warming gently without boiling.

  4. Mix 2 teaspoons of flour with 4 teaspoons of water and 2 ounces of butter, then add to the oysters and liquor.

  5. Stir over low heat until it just begins to boil, then 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. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and body to the sauce while it melts into the liquor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, lightly bodied texture.
Oysters
Provide the main briny flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until it just begins to boil. Flour thickens sauces best when heated gently and stirred, so the mixture thickens evenly. Boiling hard or too long can cause lumps and make the oysters tough.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, liver, oyster, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, liver, oyster, butter, flour. 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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