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Baked Halibut

A baked halibut steak seasoned with salt, pepper, onion, tomato juice, lemon, and water, finished with a flour-thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked Halibut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the halibut steak in salted water for about 1 hour.

  2. Drain the fish.

  3. Rub the fish with salt and pepper.

Bake

  1. Melt shortening in a roaster.

  2. Lay the fish inside the roaster.

  3. Top the fish with onion slices, tomato juice, and lemon juice.

  4. Add boiling water.

  5. Bake for about 1 hour.

  6. Remove the fish.

  7. Thicken the sauce with moistened flour.

Leftovers

  1. Break up leftover fish into a baking dish.

  2. Cover the dish with sauce.

  3. Bake again the next day for improved flavor.

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

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 steak
Provides the main flesh, which turns firm and flaky as it cooks through.
Shortening
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps keep the fish from drying out.
Flour
Starch thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce when it is heated.
Tomato juice
Adds acidity and savoury flavour to the sauce as it bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the richness of the fish and sauce.
Onion
Releases sweetness and aroma into the liquid during baking.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with moistened flour. Flour added dry clumps and stays grainy. Mixing it smooth in cold liquid first lets the starch disperse, and it thickens only once the sauce is hot enough.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, tomato, lemon, flour):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, tomato, lemon, flour. 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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