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Broiled Halibut with Maitre D'hotel Butter

Broiled halibut seasoned with salt and pepper, cooked over coals, topped with Maitre d'Hotel butter, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Broiled Halibut with Maitre D'hotel Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Season the halibut slices with salt and pepper.

  2. Place the halibut in the broiler and cook over clear coals for 20 minutes, turning frequently.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer to a hot dish and spread Maitre d'Hotel butter on top, using 1 tablespoon for each pound of fish.

  2. Garnish with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a flaky texture.
Maitre d'hotel butter
Adds fat and richness, melting over the hot fish to add flavour and moisture.

The step that matters

Turning the halibut frequently over the broiler. Fish is lean and dries out or chars quickly over direct heat. Frequent turning exposes each side to heat evenly, helping the flesh cook through while staying moist.

“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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