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Head and Shoulders with a White Sauce

A fish head and shoulders dish simmered in a white sauce of butter, wine, oysters, and lobster, served with a crisp breadcrumb topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

Head and Shoulders with a White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil onions and parsley in 3 pints of water until flavor is extracted.

  2. Remove gills from fish and wash head and shoulders in cold water.

  3. Pour boiling water over one side of fish and quickly remove black slime without breaking skin, then repeat on the other side.

  4. Boil enough water to cover fish, adding ½ cup vinegar and a handful of coarse sea salt.

  5. Dry fish before placing it in water.

Cook and glaze the fish

  1. Place fish on drainer, set it in boiling water, and cook for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove fish and glaze it with 2 egg yolks.

  3. Sprinkle with bread crumbs, minced parsley, pepper, salt, and lemon zest.

  4. Dot fish with bits of ½ pound butter and place it before a fire to baste until bread is crisp and parsley is green.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain stock and thicken it with butter kneaded with flour.

  2. Add ½ cup white wine, oysters with their liquor, lemon juice, white pepper, and lobster meat.

  3. Boil sauce for a few minutes.

  4. Pour some around fish and serve the rest in a separate dish.

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. Parsley + peppertop 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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish head and shoulders
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently in simmering water to stay moist.
Egg yolks
Form a glaze on the fish that helps the crumbs brown and bind.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the crumb coating crisp and brown while basting.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce, balancing its richness.
Oysters
Add briny flavor and a soft, silky texture to the sauce.
Lobster meat
Adds sweet, delicate flavor and texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Dry fish before placing it in water. A dry surface lets the fish settle into the simmering liquid without sudden temperature shock or breaking the skin, and keeps the poaching liquid from being diluted before the fish is set in it.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, parsley, vinegar, egg, pepper, lemon, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, parsley, vinegar, egg, pepper, lemon, 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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