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Boiled White Fish

A whole white fish boiled with salt, served with butter, pepper, sliced hard‑boiled eggs, and a thickened butter‑flour sauce.

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.

  4. Dress the fish with butter and pepper.

  5. Garnish the fish with sliced hard-boiled eggs.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, melt an egg-sized piece of butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Gradually add ½ pint of boiling water, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Add the sliced hard-boiled eggs to the sauce and 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 + 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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in salted water until tender.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked briefly in butter before the water is added.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness to the dressed fish.
Hard boiled eggs
Add a firm, creamy texture and mild richness as garnish and in the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the fish without boiling. Boiling toughens and breaks up delicate fish flesh, so a gentle simmer keeps it moist and tender.

“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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