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Broiled Blue Fish

Broiled Blue Fish is a fish cooked slowly in salted water with vinegar, cloves, peppercorns, mace, onion, then finished in butter and oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Broiled Blue Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Poach the fish

  1. Sew the fish in coarse netting.

  2. Boil the fish very slowly in salted boiling water with vinegar, cloves, peppercorns, mace, and onion for about 30 minutes.

  3. Check that the fish is done when the meat separates easily from the backbone.

  4. Remove the netting and place the fish on a hot platter.

Finish and serve

  1. Dot the fish with maitre d’hotel butter and set it in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 5 minutes.

  2. Garnish with lemon slices and serve.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Blue fish
Provides the main protein, which firms and flakes as it cooks through.
Vinegar or wine
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the poaching liquid and fish.
Maitre d’hotel butter
Adds fat and richness, moistening the fish as it finishes in the oven.

The step that matters

Boiling the fish very slowly. Vigorous boiling toughens the protein and can break the fish apart. A gentle simmer cooks it evenly and keeps the flesh tender and intact.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, vinegar, clove, onion, butter, lemon):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar, clove, onion, butter, lemon. 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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