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Broiled Whitings

Broiled whitings served with a creamy sauce made from butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Broiled Whitings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. Make a brine with water, coarse sea salt, parsley, shallots, and onion.

  2. Boil the brine for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the brine.

Poach the whitings

  1. Boil the whitings in the brine, adding 1 cup of milk.

  2. Drain the whitings when done.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt butter in a pan.

  2. Add flour to the butter.

  3. Stir in 2 whole green shallots, pepper, and salt.

  4. Thicken the sauce with cream.

  5. Remove the shallots from the sauce.

  6. Pour the sauce over the whitings.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat and richness, and helps form the base of the sauce.
Flour
Mixed with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, thickening the sauce further.
Milk
Adds liquid and mild sweetness to the poaching liquid and sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the butter. Flour must be stirred into melted butter so starch granules coat evenly; clumps form if it is added unevenly or the mixture is not kept moving, leaving lumps in the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, shallot, milk, butter, flour, pepper, cream):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, shallot, milk, butter, flour, pepper, cream. 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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