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Baked Flounders

A baked flounder topped with butter, mushrooms, parsley, onions, breadcrumbs, and caper sauce flavored with anchovy essence and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Flounders

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and split the flounders, removing all small bones.

  2. Lay the fish in a buttered dish.

Bake

  1. Strew chopped mushrooms, parsley, green onions, and breadcrumbs over the fish.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and a small amount of grated nutmeg.

  3. Dot the top with pieces of butter and bake at 400°F (200°C).

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Prepare a sufficient quantity of caper sauce, flavoring it with essence of anchovy and lemon juice.

  2. Once cooked, drain the butter from the fish, pour the sauce over it, and serve.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Flounders
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender, flaky texture.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the fish from drying as it bakes.
Breadcrumbs
Form a topping that soaks up juices and browns lightly in the oven.
Mushrooms
Release moisture and savory flavor into the filling as they cook.
Caper sauce
Adds tangy, briny flavor that cuts through the richness of the fish and butter.
Essence of anchovy
Adds deep savory flavor to the sauce, boosting its overall saltiness and umami.

The step that matters

Dot the top with pieces of butter and bake at 400°F (200°C). Butter that is spread evenly over the fish and topping bastes the flesh as it heats, helping keep the flounder moist while the breadcrumbs brown. Too little butter or uneven placement can leave dry, patchy spots.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, parsley, onion, pepper, sauce, anchovy):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, parsley, onion, pepper, sauce, anchovy. 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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