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Halibut Cutlets

Halibut cutlets made with butter, cream, and breadcrumbs, then fried and garnished with parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Halibut Cutlets

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 ↓

Halibut Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Pass the halibut through a food chopper twice.

  2. Mix in the softened butter, cream, salt, pepper, and onion juice.

  3. Form the mixture into cutlets and chill them.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll each cutlet in sifted bread crumbs, then dip in the diluted egg, and roll again in crumbs.

  2. Fry the cutlets in deep fat until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Provides the main body of the cutlets, becoming tender and flaky when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the cutlet moist during frying.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the fish mixture, keeping it tender.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres and browns during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp golden coating that browns in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Chilling the formed cutlets. Chilling firms the butter and cream in the fish mixture so the cutlets hold their shape and the coating stays intact when they hit the hot fat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, pepper, bread, egg, parsley, lemon. 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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