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Baked Halibut with Egg Sauce

A baked halibut served with a white sauce enriched with egg whites and yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,666 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Halibut with Egg Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Bake the halibut

  1. Layer thin slices of salted pork in the bottom of a roasting pan.

  2. Place the fresh halibut on top, seasoning it lightly with coarse sea salt.

  3. Add more thin slices of pork on top and a little hot water.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes, basting occasionally.

Make the egg sauce and serve

  1. Prepare white sauce, adding a little salt and the chopped egg whites.

  2. Transfer the fish to a platter, pour the sauce over it, and crumble the yolk on top.

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. Pork + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pork + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,387 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sauce + eggtop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Sauce and egg 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

Halibut
Forms the main flesh of the dish, cooking through gently in the oven.
Salted pork
Adds savory fat and salt that flavor the fish as it bakes.
White sauce
Provides a creamy, moist coating that softens the dish's flavor.
Hard-cooked egg
Adds richness and texture through the chopped whites and crumbled yolk.

The step that matters

Basting the fish during baking. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in dry heat. Basting with the pan juices and pork fat keeps the surface moist while the flesh cooks through.

“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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