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Whiting Fines Herbes

A baked whiting stuffed with finely minced herbs, seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Whiting Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Have the fishmonger bone the whiting.

  2. Fill the cavity of each fish with the minced herbs.

  3. Season the fish with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  4. Place the fish in a well-greased baking bag.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C) for 15 minutes.

  2. Serve on a hot dish, pouring the fish's liquor into the center.

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. Chive + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chive + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Whiting
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in the bag to stay moist.
Chives or shallot and parsley
Adds fresh, aromatic flavor to the fish as it cooks in the cavity.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Chivethe original

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