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Steamed Fish

Steamed fish served with egg, tomato, or hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,469 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Steamed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the fish for cooking and place it on a plate.

  2. Cover the fish with cheesecloth.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the fish over gently boiling water for about 10 minutes per pound, plus an additional 10 minutes.

  2. Serve with Egg Sauce, Tomato Sauce, or Hollandaise Sauce.

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. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Fish + tomatotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hepten-3-one (metal).

  3. Fish + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,487 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + tomatotop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Is the main protein, cooked gently by steam until it is done.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, sauce):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, sauce. 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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