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To Boil a Brill

A boiled brill fish served with parsley garnish and optional sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lobster work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 890 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

To Boil a Brill

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the brill by removing the fins and gills.

  2. Bring a pot of nearly boiling water to a gentle simmer.

  3. Add a generous amount of coarse sea salt to the water.

Poach and serve

  1. Carefully place the brill in the water and simmer for 20-30 minutes, depending on size.

  2. Watch the fish closely; do not let it remain in the water once it begins to crack.

  3. Drain the brill and place it on a serving plate.

  4. Garnish with curled parsley and serve with sauce if desired.

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 + lobstertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Brill
Is the main protein, cooked gently in simmering water until its flesh turns opaque and flakes.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is lightly flavoured as it cooks.

The step that matters

Removing the brill as it begins to crack. Fish flesh becomes dry and tough once overcooked. Proteins tighten past their ideal point, so the brill should leave the water as soon as it starts to crack and separate.

“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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