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Buttered Whiting

A baked whiting coated in flour, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Buttered Whiting

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the whiting and dry them with a cloth.

  2. Mix a little flour, salt, and pepper together, then coat the fish thoroughly with this mixture.

Bake

  1. Butter a tin dish and place the whiting in it.

  2. Dot the remaining butter over the fish in small pieces.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C), basting constantly with the butter.

  4. Cook until the fish is brown, about 15 to 20 minutes depending on thickness.

  5. Transfer the whiting to a hot dish and pour the cooking butter over them.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Whiting + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Whiting
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking up flaky and tender in the oven.
Butter
Carries heat to the fish, adds moisture and richness, and helps the surface brown.
Flour
Forms a light coating that helps the fish brown and keeps its surface from drying out.

The step that matters

Basting constantly with the butter. Spooning melted butter over the fish keeps its surface moist while the heat browns it, so the flesh stays tender rather than drying out before it colours.

“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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