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Boiled Whitefish

A boiled whitefish served with butter, pepper, and a sauce of butter, flour, and shredded eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Whitefish and sauce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Boiled Whitefish

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Lay the fish open and place it in a dripping pan with the back down.

  2. Nearly cover the fish with water and add 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt.

  3. Cover tightly and simmer (do not boil) for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Dress the fish with butter and pepper, and garnish with sliced hard-boiled eggs.

  2. For the sauce, melt a piece of butter the size of an egg in a saucepan.

  3. Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour and cook for a minute.

  4. Gradually add ½ pint of boiling water, stirring until thickened.

  5. Add 3 shredded hard-boiled eggs to the sauce and mix well.

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. Whitefish + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Whitefish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in simmering water until flaky.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish and forms the base of the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and water mixture into a smooth, stable sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a creamy texture to the sauce and a mild richness to the garnish.

The step that matters

Simmer, do not boil, the fish. Boiling toughens and breaks up delicate fish proteins, making the flesh dry and ragged. A gentle simmer with the pan covered cooks it evenly and keeps it moist.

“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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