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Halibut Cutlets

Halibut cutlets are battered and fried fish slices served with lemon or fish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Halibut Cutlets

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 ↓

Halibut Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the halibut in a dish with a little salt and enough water to cover for about 1 hour.

  2. Remove the fish, dry it, and cut it into slices no thicker than ½ inch.

Fry the cutlets

  1. Make a thin batter by mixing flour with water.

  2. Optionally, sprinkle seasoned bread crumbs over the cutlets before frying.

  3. Dip the fish slices in the batter and place them in a frying pan with hot fat.

  4. Fry until one side is browned, then turn them over to brown the other side.

  5. Drain the cutlets on blotting paper and serve on a napkin.

Serve

  1. Serve with lemon squeezed over them or with anchovy, shrimp, or any preferred fish sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  3. Lemon + anchovytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + anchovytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
The main protein; cutting it into thin slices lets it cook through quickly while the coating browns.
Flour
Forms a thin batter that coats the fish, helping it brown and holding it together in the pan.
Hot fat
Conducts heat to the coated fish, browning the surface and giving the cutlets a crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Fry until one side is browned, then turn them over. Thin, battered slices can burn on the outside before the centre is cooked if the fat is too hot, or stay pale and greasy if it is too cool. Turning once gives even browning on both sides.

“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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