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Planked Fish

Fish baked on a heated wooden board with butter, salt, pepper, parsley, lemon or pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Planked Fish

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 board

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

  2. Place a wooden board in the oven to heat.

Season and bake

  1. Season the fish with salt, pepper, and a little butter.

  2. Place the fish skin-side down on the hot board.

  3. Brush the fish with more butter and season again with salt and pepper.

  4. Baste often with melted butter while baking.

  5. Bake until the fish is golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with parsley, lemon, or pickle slices.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whole white fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently to flaky, moist flesh.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the surface brown as it bastes the fish.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the flesh and draws out some surface moisture for better browning.

The step that matters

Placing the fish on the hot board. The board must be fully heated before the fish goes on, so the skin sears and the fish releases cleanly. Placing fish on a cold board can cause sticking and uneven cooking.

“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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