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Skate with Brown Butter

A skate fillet simmered in salted vinegar water, served with a browned butter sauce and fried parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Skate with Brown Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the skate

  1. Wash the skate.

  2. Place the skate in a saucepan with enough cold water to barely cover it.

  3. Add coarse sea salt and vinegar, then bring to a boil.

  4. Skim the water, reduce heat, and simmer gently for about 10 minutes.

  5. Five minutes before the fish is done, add the liver to the pan and boil it as well.

  6. Remove the fish, drain it, and place a little liver at each end.

Make the brown butter sauce

  1. Prepare the brown butter sauce by melting butter in a pan over medium heat until browned, then skim off the froth.

  2. Add salt and pepper, then remove from heat.

  3. Boil vinegar quickly until reduced to 1 tablespoon, then mix with the brown butter sauce.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve immediately, garnished with fried parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Skate
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in simmering water to stay moist and tender.
Fresh butter
Browns in the pan to form the nutty-flavored sauce that coats the fish.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity to the sauce and helps the poaching water firm the fish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after skimming. A rolling boil toughens and breaks the delicate flesh of fish. Keeping the water barely simmering cooks the skate evenly and keeps it moist and intact.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Dillfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, pepper. 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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