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Broiled Whitefish

Broiled whitefish served with a butter and catsup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Broiled Whitefish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wipe the fish dry with a cloth, ensuring no water touches it after being caught.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the fish over a hot fire of live coals until it is light brown.

  2. Bathe the fish with melted butter.

  3. Serve the fish hot.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine butter, red pepper, black pepper, tomato catsup, walnut catsup, mustard, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Melt the sauce ingredients quickly over low heat.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 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

Whitefish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked by broiling until light brown.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and carries flavour when melted over the fish and into the sauce.
Tomato catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce, giving it its main tangy flavour.
Walnut catsup
Contributes deep, savoury flavour to the sauce alongside the tomato catsup.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and a pungent bite that balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Melt the sauce ingredients quickly over low heat. Butter can separate or scorch if overheated, and gentle, brief heat keeps the emulsified sauce smooth. Rushing with high heat risks burning the milk solids and catsups.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whitefish, butter, pepper, tomato, mustard):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whitefish, butter, pepper, tomato, mustard. 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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