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Boiled White Fish

A boiled white fish served with gravy, butter, pepper, and sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled White Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Lay the fish open and place it in a dripping pan with the back down.

  2. Nearly cover the fish with water and add 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt.

  3. Cover tightly and simmer (do not boil) for 30 minutes.

Dress the fish

  1. Dress the fish with gravy, butter, and pepper, and garnish with sliced eggs.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter and stir for a minute.

  3. Gradually add the boiling water, stirring continuously.

  4. Boil the sauce for a few minutes.

  5. Add the sliced hard boiled eggs to the sauce.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Whole white fish
Main protein, cooked gently in salted water so it stays moist and tender.
Butter
Melted to start the sauce and adds richness and flavour to the fish.
All-purpose flour
Cooked with the melted butter, it thickens the sauce into a smooth gravy.
Hard boiled eggs
Sliced into the sauce and used as a garnish, adding richness and texture.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the butter and flour. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring continuously lets the flour disperse evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth sauce. Dumping it in at once makes lumps that are hard to remove.

“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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