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Baked Halibut or Salmon

Baked halibut or salmon served with a catsup and pungent sauce gravy, garnished with parsley and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Halibut or Salmon

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Soak the fish in cold water with a little coarse sea salt for 1 hour.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  3. Place a gridiron over a dripping pan with a little hot water.

Bake and brown

  1. Bake the fish in the hot oven.

  2. Butter the top of the fish just before it is done and brown it nicely.

  3. Bake small fish for about 30 minutes and large fish for about 1 hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, combine the dripping pan gravy with catsup, pungent sauce, and lemon juice.

  2. Thicken the sauce with brown flour mixed with a little cold water.

  3. Garnish the dish with parsley sprigs and serve with currant jelly.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Brown flour
Thickens the pan sauce as it is cooked, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the top of the fish brown nicely.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and tomato flavour to the pan sauce.

The step that matters

Butter the top just before the fish is done. Butter added too early can burn or brown unevenly before the fish is cooked through. Adding it near the end lets the surface brown nicely while the flesh finishes gently in the oven.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, sauce, lemon, flour, parsley):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, sauce, lemon, flour, parsley. 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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