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Boiled Codfish, Halibut, or Salmon

Boiled cod, halibut, or salmon served with drawn butter, egg sauce, or cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Codfish, Halibut, or Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the fish and wipe it dry.

  2. Dredge the fish with flour and tie it in a clean cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Bring salted water to a boil and add the fish.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes for each pound of fish.

  3. Serve on a hot platter with drawn butter, egg sauce, or cream 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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Fish + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks in the water.
Flour
Dries the fish surface and helps it hold together during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 minutes for each pound of fish. Boiling for too long toughens and dries the flesh, while too short leaves the center underdone. Timing by weight keeps the fish moist and fully cooked.

“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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