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Grilled Fish

Fish fillet coated in spiced olive oil and flour, broiled until cooked, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Grilled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dry the fish thoroughly.

  2. Dip the fish into spiced olive oil.

  3. Dust the fish with flour if desired.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the fish for 5 to 10 minutes, depending on thickness.

  2. Optionally, broil the fish between bay leaves or myrtle branches for flavor.

  3. Serve with sauce poured over or under the fish.

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. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

  2. Fish + olivetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Fish + tomatotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hepten-3-one (metal).

  4. Olive + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,871 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, cooked by direct heat until opaque and flaky.
Spiced olive oil
Carries the spices and adds fat that keeps the fish moist and helps it brown.
Flour
Forms a light coating that helps the oil cling to the fish and promotes browning.

The step that matters

Dry the fish thoroughly. Surface moisture turns to steam under the broiler instead of browning. A dry surface also lets the oil and flour stick evenly, so the coating sets rather than sliding off.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, olive, flour, myrtle):

  1. Lettucefits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, olive, flour, myrtle. 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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