Skip to main content

Planked White Fish with Potato Roses

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Planked White Fish with Potato Roses

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Clean the fish by removing the backbone, head, tail, and fins.

  3. Spread the fish with soft butter, then dredge with flour, coarse sea salt, black pepper, and lemon juice.

  4. Heat a plank in a pan in the oven, then place the fish on it and bake for about 15 minutes.

  5. Remove the fish, surround it with mashed potatoes, and return to the oven.

  6. Bake for an additional 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish.

  7. Prepare mashed potatoes with less cream or milk, place in a pastry bag, and pipe into rose shapes around the fish.

  8. Brush the potato roses lightly with the egg yolk mixed with cream and brown quickly in the oven.

  9. Garnish with lemon and parsley, and serve on the plank.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, pepper, lemon, egg, cream):

  1. Spinachfits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, pepper, lemon, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipes