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Baked Swordfish

A baked swordfish fillet seasoned with salt, flour, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Swordfish

Oven, in the book's wordsA good hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter an agate pan and place the fish in it.

  3. Sprinkle the fish with coarse sea salt and flour, then add small pieces of butter on top.

Bake

  1. Bake for 45 minutes.

  2. Just before removing from the oven, pour 1 cup of cream over 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Swordfish + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Swordfish + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12 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

Swordfish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into moist, flaky pieces.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the fish moist and carries flavour as it bakes.
Flour
Light coating that helps the surface brown and gives the juices some body.
Cream
Added near the end to enrich the sauce with fat and a soft, rich texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cream just before removing the fish. Cream is rich in fat and can split or turn grainy if it boils hard for long. Adding it near the end lets it warm through and blend with the pan juices without overcooking.

“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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