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Planked Fish

Fish cooked on a hot plank with butter and lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Planked Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Remove the head from the fish and split it from head to tail, keeping the skin intact.

  2. Preheat a hardwood plank (oak) until very hot and brush it with butter.

  3. Place the fish skin-side down on the plank and secure it firmly.

Bake and baste

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for five minutes.

  2. Baste the fish with a sauce made from the lemon and salt using a small brush.

  3. Continue basting every ten minutes for a total of thirty-five minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove from the oven, place the plank on a platter, and serve immediately.

  2. Garnish the platter to cover the plank, but do not remove the fish from it when serving.

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

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

  2. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Provides the flesh that is cooked gently on the plank, with the skin holding it together.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness to the basting sauce, balancing the richness of the fish.
Butter
Coats the plank and adds fat that helps prevent sticking and promotes gentle browning.

The step that matters

Preheating the plank. The plank must be very hot before the fish goes on it. A cold plank heats slowly, so the fish steams and sticks instead of searing lightly and releasing cleanly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, 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.

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