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To Broil Fish

A method for broiling fish with butter, salt, pepper, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Broil Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grill

  1. Grease the gridiron thoroughly.

  2. Lay the fish on the gridiron.

Broil

  1. For small fish, broil over a hot fire; for large fish, use a moderate fire.

  2. Turn the fish constantly, keeping the skin side against the fire longer.

  3. When the flesh easily parts from the bone, loosen the fish with a knife.

  4. Invert a hot dish over the fish and quickly turn both back again.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish with generous butter, salt, pepper, chopped parsley, and lemon juice.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 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

Fish
Is the main protein; its flesh firms and turns opaque as it cooks over direct heat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the cooked fish at the table.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich fish and butter.

The step that matters

Turning the fish. Fish is delicate and sticks to hot metal, and its flesh breaks apart easily. Turning it constantly and loosening it only when the flesh releases from the bone keeps the skin intact and the fish whole.

“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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