Skip to main content
Main

Baked Whitefish

A whole whitefish is cleaned, floured, baked, and basted with butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Whitefish

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Open the fish down the back and remove the backbone without taking off any fat or meat.

  2. Wipe the fish dry and heat lard in a pan until hot.

Bake and serve

  1. Dust the skin of the fish with flour and place it skin side down in the pan.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 45 minutes.

  3. When nearly done, sprinkle with white pepper, coarse sea salt, and melted butter to help brown.

  4. Transfer the whole fish to a hot platter and serve.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Whitefish + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Whitefish + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. White pepper + buttertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + white peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

Flour and butter 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 through in the oven.
Lard
Fries the skin in hot fat, helping it crisp and brown.
Flour
Dusted on the skin, it helps the surface crisp and brown.
Melted butter
Basted on near the end, it adds richness and promotes browning.

The step that matters

Adding the pepper, salt and butter near the end. Butter contains milk solids and water that brown and can scorch at high heat, so adding it when nearly done helps control browning and avoids burnt flavour.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whitefish, flour, butter. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes