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Flounders Souchet

A boiled flounder served with parsley, brown bread, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Flounders Souchet

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Boil the flounders in water with a little coarse sea salt until tender.

  2. Remove the scum carefully from the water.

  3. Lift the fish one by one into a vegetable dish filled with boiling water, being careful not to break them.

  4. Add one or two sprigs of fresh green parsley to the dish.

Serve

  1. Serve with thin slices of brown bread and butter.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 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

Flounders
Provide the delicate white flesh that is the main component of the dish.
Brown bread
Offers a sturdy, slightly nutty base to accompany the delicate fish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth fat to pair with the mild fish and bread.

The step that matters

Lifting the fish into the boiling water. Flounder flesh is delicate and flakes easily once cooked, so lifting the fish gently one at a time keeps the fillets and bodies intact. Rough handling tears the flesh and breaks the fish apart.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter. 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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