Why it works: Fish and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,487 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Baked Fish
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Clean and prepare the fish for baking.
Place the fish in a baking dish.
Bake and serve
Pour Hollandaise Sauce over the fish.
Bake in the preheated oven until cooked through, about 20-30 minutes.
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.
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Fish + saucetop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,487 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
- Fish
- Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the oven, setting into flakes.
- Hollandaise sauce
- Adds richness and moisture, coating the fish as it bakes.
The step that matters
Bake until cooked through. Fish cooks quickly and becomes dry and tough when overbaked. Checking for an opaque, flaky center near the low end of the time range helps keep it moist. Hollandaise is an emulsion of egg yolk and butter, so high heat can also cause it to break and separate.
“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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