Name: Baked Whitefish
Ingredients: 1 whole whitefish, cleaned and boned; ½ cup cracker crumbs; coarse sea salt, to taste; black pepper, to taste; 2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces; 1 smooth maple board; parsley, for garnish; 1 lemon, sliced

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 Whitefish

Oven, in the book's wordsA good hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
Sprinkle the fish with cracker crumbs, salt, and pepper.
Dot the fish with small pieces of butter.
Place the fish skin-side down on the maple board.

Bake and serve

Bake in the hot oven until browned.
Serve on the plank, garnished with parsley and lemon slices, or transfer to a platter and serve with lemon butter sauce.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Whitefish: Provides the main protein that cooks through and flakes when baked.
Cracker crumbs: Form a light crust that helps the surface brown in the oven.
Butter: Adds fat and moisture that carry flavor and promote browning on the fish.

“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.