Skip to main content
Main

Flanked Fish

Flanked Fish is a fish fillet cooked on a heated wooden board, brushed with butter and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Flanked Fish

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. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C) and place the wooden board inside until very hot.

Cook the fish

  1. Place the fish on the board, skin side down, and brush it with melted butter.

  2. Season the fish with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Bake the fish in the oven, basting it with melted butter until it turns golden brown.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish the edges with potato puff using a star tube or pastry bag.

  2. Return the board to the oven for a few moments until the potatoes are brown.

  3. Garnish the fish with lemon and serve it on the board.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 and cooks into flaky, tender flesh under heat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the skin and surface brown as it bastes.
Potato puff
Forms a golden, piped border around the fish and adds a light, crisp texture.

The step that matters

Basting the fish until golden brown. Butter brushed over the surface carries heat and encourages browning, while keeping the flesh from drying out. Too little basting can leave the fish pale and dry.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, pepper, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, pepper, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipes