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To Boil Fish

A boiled fish stuffed with salt pork and bread, seasoned and cooked slowly, served with drawn butter, eggs, and capers or nasturtium.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stuff the fish with chopped salt pork and bread, season with salt and pepper, and sew it up.

  2. Wrap the fish in a cloth and place it in cold water, ensuring it is covered.

Cook

  1. Add 3 tablespoons of vinegar and 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt for each pound of fish.

  2. Boil slowly for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the fin can be easily pulled out.

Serve

  1. Serve with drawn butter, eggs, and capers or nasturtium.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

  5. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat into the stuffing, adding richness and savory flavor to the mild fish.
Bread
Soaks up juices and fat from the fish, keeping the stuffing moist and soft.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the mild, rich fish.
Drawn butter
Adds fat and richness to the cooked fish when served.

The step that matters

Boil slowly. A vigorous boil breaks up delicate fish and toughens its proteins, while a slow, gentle simmer cooks it evenly and keeps it moist and intact.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pork, bread, pepper, vinegar, butter, egg. 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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