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Whiting, Boiled

Boiled whiting seasoned with salt, served with parsley garnish and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Whiting and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 236 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Whiting, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the fish without removing the skin.

  2. Fill a shallow pan with enough warm water to cover the fish and add a little salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the fish to the pan and bring the water gently to a boil.

  2. Simmer the fish for about 7 to 8 minutes if they are small.

  3. Drain the fish well and serve on a dish lined with paper or a folded napkin.

  4. Garnish with parsley and serve with a suitable 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. Whiting + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Whiting + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

The step that matters

Bringing the water to a gentle boil. Starting the fish in warm water and heating it gently keeps the flesh tender and intact. Vigorous boiling can break the delicate flesh apart and toughen it, so the water should only simmer once it reaches the boil.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, sauce. 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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