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Broiled Whitefish

A whole whitefish is broiled and served with a butter and catsup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Broiled Whitefish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wipe the whitefish dry with a cloth, ensuring no water touches it after being caught.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the fish over a quick fire of live coals until it is light brown.

  2. Bathe the fish with good sweet butter and serve hot.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine butter, red and black pepper, tomato catsup, walnut catsup, mustard, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Melt the sauce quickly over low heat.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Whitefish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked by direct heat until lightly browned.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, both in the sauce and when bathing the cooked fish.
Tomato catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce, giving it body and a tangy flavour.
Walnut catsup
Adds deep, savoury flavour to the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and pungency that balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Melt the sauce quickly over low heat. Butter and catsup-based sauces can separate or scorch if overheated. Gentle, brief heat keeps the emulsified butter smooth and the sugars from burning.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whitefish, butter, pepper, tomato, mustard):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whitefish, butter, pepper, tomato, mustard. 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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