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Boiled Halibut

A boiled halibut served with grated horseradish, parsley, egg sauce, and optional leftovers seasoned with salt, cayenne, sweet oil, eggs, vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Halibut

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the halibut

  1. Score the back of the halibut deeply and place it on a strainer in a kettle, back side down.

  2. Cover with cold water and add a handful of coarse sea salt.

  3. Heat slowly, ensuring it doesn't boil too fast.

  4. Once the fish becomes firm, carefully remove the skin.

  5. Adjust the heat to let it simmer for 25 to 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Strain the fish and serve garnished with grated horseradish and curled parsley, alongside a boat of egg sauce.

Use leftovers

  1. For leftovers, mince the cold halibut and season with salt, cayenne, sweet oil, chopped hard-boiled eggs, and a generous amount of vinegar.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Horseradish + saucetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together775 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

Halibut
Forms the main body of the dish; cooking it gently firms the flesh into flakes.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the leftover mixture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the leftover fish.
Sweet oil
Adds fat that gives the leftover mince moisture and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Heating slowly and keeping the water below a boil. Gentle heat keeps the fish tender and intact. Rapid boiling toughens the proteins and can break the delicate flesh apart, so the water should only steam-simmer until the fish firms.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, egg, sauce, pepper, vinegar. 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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