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Baked Halibut with Tomato Sauce

A baked halibut served with a tomato sauce made from tomatoes, water, onion, cloves, sugar, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Baked Halibut with Tomato Sauce

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 sauce

  1. To make the tomato sauce, cook tomatoes, water, onion, and cloves together for 20 minutes.

  2. Add sugar, butter, flour, salt, and pepper to the sauce and cook for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the sauce before serving.

Bake and serve

  1. Clean the halibut and place it in a baking pan.

  2. Pour half of the tomato sauce around the halibut.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 40 minutes, basting often.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Forms the main protein that becomes flaky and firm as it bakes.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and body to the sauce, giving it its base flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and smoothing the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling with liquid as it cooks.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour must cook long enough to lose its raw taste and thicken evenly; adding it to a hot liquid without stirring can cause lumps.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, sugar, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, sugar, butter, flour, pepper. 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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