Skip to main content
Main

Planked White Fish

A whole white fish is seasoned, grilled on a wooden plank, and basted with butter, served with lemon and cucumber slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fish on the underside and remove the bones.

  2. Wash and dry the fish, removing the opaque fat from the edges.

  3. Rub the fish with olive oil and sprinkle with brown sugar, cayenne, and salt one hour before cooking.

  4. Heat a plank made of hard wood before placing the fish on it.

Cook and serve

  1. Baste the fish with melted butter while cooking.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve garnished with lemon and cucumber 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Olive + cucumbertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

  5. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, moist flesh.
Olive oil
Carries the seasonings and helps the surface stay moist as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during cooking.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the surface moist while it cooks.

The step that matters

Basting with melted butter while cooking. Fish is lean and dries out quickly over heat. Regular basting adds fat and moisture to the surface, helping keep the flesh tender and the seasoned crust from scorching.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, olive, sugar, pepper, butter, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, olive, sugar, pepper, butter, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes