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Baked Halibut with Tomato Sauce

Baked halibut served with a tomato sauce made from tomatoes, onion, garlic, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Halibut with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Wipe the halibut and sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Place in a buttered pan and cover with the fat salt pork, gashed several times.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 12 to 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the fish to a serving dish, discarding the pork.

Make the tomato sauce

  1. In a saucepan, cook the tomatoes, onion, clove, and a few grains of salt and pepper for 8 minutes.

  2. Remove the onion and clove, then run the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add a few grains of baking soda and cook until the tomato is reduced to 2 teaspoons.

  4. Pour the sauce around the fish and garnish with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Is the main protein, cooked gently in the oven until flaky.
Tomatoes
Provide the base of the sauce, adding acidity and body as they reduce.
Butter
Greases the pan so the fish does not stick and adds richness.
Fat salt pork
Covers the fish during baking, adding fat and savory flavor that bastes the fish.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some tomato acidity, softening the sauce and changing its color.

The step that matters

Reducing the tomato sauce to 2 teaspoons. Cooking the sauce down concentrates its flavor and thickens it. Baking soda reacts with the tomato's acid and foams, so add only a few grains and watch closely, since too much will make the sauce taste soapy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, pork, tomato, onion, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, pork, tomato, onion, parsley. 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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