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Steamed Halibut

Steamed halibut served with parsley garnish and egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,765 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Steamed Halibut

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cover the halibut with a cloth and place it in a steamer.

  2. Set the steamer over a pot of fast-boiling water and steam for 2 hours.

  3. Transfer the halibut to a hot dish, surround it with parsley, and serve with egg-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.

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. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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

White halibut
Provides the main protein, which turns firm and flaky as it steams through gently.

The step that matters

Keeping the steamer water boiling steadily. Steam must keep flowing around the fish for the full two hours. If the water drops to a weak simmer or runs dry, the fish cooks unevenly and the timing in the record no longer holds.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce. 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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