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Boiled Fish

A whole fish is boiled with salt, saltpetre, and water, then served with horse-radish garnish and oyster sauce or melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Horse and radish work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 529 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the fish and clean the inside, especially the backbone.

Boil

  1. Place the fish in a kettle and cover it with cold water mixed with salt and saltpetre.

  2. Bring to a gentle boil over moderate heat, skimming off any scum.

  3. Cook until the fish is done, about 20 to 30 minutes for medium-sized fish or 30 to 45 minutes for large fish.

Serve

  1. Drain the fish and serve on a hot napkin, garnished with liver and roe.

  2. Add tufts of scraped horse-radish around the edge and serve with oyster sauce or melted butter.

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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  3. Fish + horsetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Horse + oystertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Fish + radishtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together65 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Seasons the cooking water and firms the surface of the fish.
Saltpetre
Helps keep the fish flesh firm and gives it a cured, pinkish tint.

The step that matters

Gentle boil with skimming. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil keeps the flesh tender and intact, while skimming removes scum that would otherwise cloud the broth and flavour the fish unpleasantly.

Swap the radish

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

  1. Cucumberfits about as well
  2. Radishthe original
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, horse, oyster. 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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