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Boiled Red Snapper

A whole red snapper boiled in salted water with lemon, served with parsley garnish and tomato sauce or Hollandaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Boiled Red Snapper

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Sew the fish in coarse white mosquito netting.

Poach and serve

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add salt and lemon juice.

  2. Once boiling, reduce heat to a simmer and cook the fish for about 30 minutes.

  3. Carefully lift the fish from the water, drain, and unwrap.

  4. Place the fish on a hot dish, garnish with parsley, and serve with tomato sauce or sauce Hollandaise.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  4. Snapper + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Snapper + parsleytop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Red snapper
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently into moist, flaky flesh when simmered.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Simmer, don't boil, once the fish is in. A vigorous boil toughens and breaks up delicate fish flesh and can cause it to fall apart. Holding the water at a gentle simmer cooks the fish evenly and keeps it moist and intact.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (snapper, lemon, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Okrafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against snapper, lemon, parsley. 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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