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Fish

Whole fish cooked in butter until done, served garnished.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly.

  2. Place the fish in a deep tin or plated copper dish.

  3. Lightly smear the surface of the fish with butter and add a small amount around it.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the dish in a Dutch or American oven in front of a clear fire.

  2. Cook until the fish is done, allowing it to cook in its own juices.

  3. Serve garnished as desired.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in its own juices to stay moist.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the surface so the fish does not dry out while cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking until the fish is done. Fish cooks quickly and becomes dry and tough once overcooked. Cooking it in its own juices with butter helps keep it moist, so checking for doneness early matters.

“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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