Skip to main content
Main

Baked Whitings

A baked fish dish with butter, wine, herbs, and a sauce of chablis, mushroom ketchup, gravy, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Whiting and ketchup 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 ↓

Baked Whitings

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Clean the whitings and cut off the heads.

  2. Season the fish with salt and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter the bottom of a pudding dish and lay in the fish.

  2. Sprinkle more butter and the light wine over the fish.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  4. Mix chablis, herbs, mushroom ketchup, gravy, and cayenne in a saucepan, then boil the mixture for a few minutes.

  5. Pour the mixture over the fish.

  6. Return the fish to the oven for another 30 minutes.

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. Whiting + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Wine + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Whitings
The main fish, which cooks gently in butter and wine until flaky.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the fish from drying out in the oven.
Light wine
Adds acidity and moisture, helping steam the fish as it bakes.
Chablis
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce, with its flavour concentrated by boiling.
Gravy
Adds body and savoury depth to the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce before pouring it over the fish. Boiling reduces the wine and gravy mixture and cooks off raw alcohol, so the sauce tastes concentrated rather than thin or sharp. Pouring it on cold would dilute the fish juices and cool the dish.

“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

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes