Name: Baked Halibut
Ingredients: 4 pounds halibut; flour; coarse sea salt; salt pork; hot water; 1 egg; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 tablespoons flour

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Halibut

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
Place the halibut in a baking pan.
Dredge the halibut with flour and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.
Cut the salt pork into small pieces and place on top of the halibut.

Bake

Pour hot water into the pan.
Bake for about 1 hour.

Make the gravy

In a separate bowl, mix the egg, butter, flour, and water to make a gravy.
Adjust the quantity to your preference.

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Flour + porktop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,187 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Halibut: Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through in the oven to become flaky.
Flour: Dredging coats the fish and helps it brown, and thickens the gravy.
Salt pork: Renders fat over the fish, adding moisture and savoury flavour as it cooks.
Egg: Sets when heated and helps bind and thicken the gravy.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the gravy.

“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.