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To Boil Fresh Fish

A boiled fish served with a sauce made from eggs, butter, mustard, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Boil Fresh Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Tie the cleaned fish in a cloth.

  2. Place it in a kettle of boiling water with ½ tablespoon of salt.

  3. Boil for 30 to 45 minutes.

Make the egg sauce

  1. In a separate pot, combine chopped eggs, butter, pepper, salt, mustard, and enough milk to create a gravy.

  2. Boil this mixture.

Serve

  1. Remove the fish from the cloth and place it on a platter.

  2. Pour the sauce over the fish.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in boiling water until flaky.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide body and richness, thickening the sauce as they break down into the milk.
Butter
Adds fat and smooth richness to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, giving it a smooth, pourable texture.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the egg and butter.

The step that matters

Boiling the egg sauce. Once the eggs are in milk, keep the heat controlled and stir so the mixture thickens smoothly rather than scorching or separating. Milk proteins can scorch on the bottom of a pot if left unattended.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, butter, pepper, milk. 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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