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Baked Halibut

Baked halibut with salt pork, onion, bay leaf, and a sauce of butter, oyster juice, cream, cayenne, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Halibut

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

  1. Clean the halibut.

  2. Season it with salt and pepper.

  3. Fry the salt pork in a dripping pan until brown.

  4. Add the bay leaf and sliced onion to the pan.

  5. Place the fish in the pan.

Bake

  1. Brown the fish in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Add a little water.

  3. Bake for one hour, basting frequently.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan.

  2. Thicken the butter with oyster juice and cream or milk.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and cayenne.

  4. Add the oysters to the sauce.

  5. Add a little nutmeg to the sauce just before serving.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a flaky texture as it bakes.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pan, adding richness and browning the fish.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and helps give it a smooth, rich body.
Oyster juice
Adds a briny, savory flavor to the sauce and helps thicken it.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the butter with oyster juice and cream or milk. Adding dairy to a hot, acidic or salty liquid can curdle or separate it. Combining the liquids gently over moderate heat, and adding the cream slowly while stirring, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, pork, onion, butter, oyster, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork, onion, butter, oyster, cream. 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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