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Planked Whitefish, Parsley Butter

A whitefish fillet cooked on a plank with parsley butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Planked Whitefish, Parsley Butter

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Prepare the whitefish by cleaning and scaling it.

  2. Place the fish on a plank and season with salt.

Make the parsley butter

  1. Melt the cooking butter and mix in chopped parsley.

Cook and serve

  1. Brush the parsley butter over the fish.

  2. Cook the fish on the plank in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) until done.

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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Whitefish + parsleytop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, cooking into flaky, moist flesh.
Cooking butter
Carries the parsley flavor and adds richness and moisture to the fish.

The step that matters

Cook the fish on the plank in a hot oven until done. Fish cooks quickly and dries out if overcooked. Judging doneness by the flesh turning opaque and flaking easily helps keep it moist.

“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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