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Steamed Fish

A fish steamed with cheesecloth and coarse sea salt, served with egg, tomato, or hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Fish and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,782 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the prepared fish on a plate.

  2. Cover the fish with cheesecloth.

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

  4. Serve with Egg, Tomato, 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. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 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
Provides the protein that cooks through gently in the steam, becoming flaky and opaque.

The step that matters

Steaming the fish over gently boiling water. Steam heat cooks fish gently and evenly. If the water boils too hard, the outside can overcook and dry out before the centre is done, so keep the water at a gentle simmer.

“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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