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To Boil Carp or Tench

A boiled carp or tench seasoned with salt, parsley, lemon, butter, and fish sauces.

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

To Boil Carp or Tench

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the fish.

  2. Scale the fish.

  3. Remove the gills.

  4. Rub salt into the back-bone.

  5. Let the fish sit in salted spring water for 2 hours.

  6. Wash the fish in clear spring water.

Boil and serve

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil.

  2. Add a handful of salt to the boiling water.

  3. Boil the fish for 15 to 20 minutes if it's a moderate size, including the milt or roe.

  4. Garnish the fish with parsley and lemon slices.

  5. Serve the fish with melted butter and fish sauces.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Butter + fish saucetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together141 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lemon + fish saucetop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp or tench
Firm white flesh forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently by boiling.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat that complements the mild, lean flesh of the fish.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the mild boiled fish.

The step that matters

Boil the fish for 15 to 20 minutes if it's a moderate size. Boiling for too long toughens the proteins in the flesh and makes it dry and flaky. Timing depends on the fish's size, so a larger fish needs checking for doneness rather than following the same time.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, fish sauce. 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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