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Broiled Bream, Shalot Sauce

Broiled bream served with a shallot, butter, parsley, and lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Broiled Bream, Shalot Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Scale the bream.

  2. Draw the bream.

  3. Trim the fins and tail.

  4. Wipe it clean.

  5. Score the fish slightly.

  6. Season.

Broil

  1. Baste with oil.

  2. Broil the fish on both sides over moderate heat.

  3. Baste with oil until cooked.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Warm the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Remove from heat.

  3. Add salt, parsley, egg yolks, chopped shallot, and lemon juice to the butter. Mix well.

  4. Pour the sauce over the broiled bream before serving.

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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Butter
Melts into a rich sauce that carries moisture and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Chopped into the warm butter, they thicken the sauce and add richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter sauce.
Oil
Basting with oil keeps the fish surface moist and helps it brown under the broiler.

The step that matters

Remove the butter from the heat before adding the egg yolks and lemon juice. Egg yolks scramble when exposed to high heat, so a sauce that is too hot can turn grainy. Removing the pan from the heat lets the butter cool slightly so the yolks blend in smoothly.

“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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