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To Boil Perch

A simple boiled perch served with parsley and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

To Boil Perch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe or wash the perch to remove slime.

  2. Scrape off the scales and clean the insides thoroughly.

  3. Remove the gills and cut off the fins.

Boil

  1. Place the perch in equal parts of cold and boiling water, salted as for mackerel.

  2. Boil for 8 to 10 minutes unless the perch is very large.

Serve

  1. Dish the perch on a napkin and garnish with curled parsley.

  2. Serve with melted butter or Sauce Maigre.

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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Perch
Provides the main flesh, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks in gently boiling water.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat to balance the mild, lean flesh of the fish.

The step that matters

Boil for 8 to 10 minutes unless the perch is very large. Fish proteins set quickly in hot water and turn dry and tough if overcooked. Timing must match the fish's size, so very large perch need longer and should be checked for flakiness rather than relying only on the time given.

“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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