Skip to main content
Main

Planked White Fish

A white fish fillet cooked on an oak plank with butter, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and garnished with lemon slices and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Planked White Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plank and fish

  1. Heat and oil the oak plank.

  2. Place the fish skin side down on the plank.

  3. Brush the fish with butter or oil.

Cook

  1. Set the plank in a dripping pan in the lower gas oven near the burners.

  2. After cooking a few meats, move the plank to the floor of the oven.

  3. Cook for about 25 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Spread the fish with the creamed butter mixed with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Garnish the edge of the plank with lemon slices and 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to flaky, tender flesh with gentle steam from the plank.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the fish from drying out while it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and the mild flavor of the fish.

The step that matters

Move the plank to the floor of the oven. Placing the plank near the burners exposes it to direct heat, which can scorch the plank before the fish cooks through. Moving it lower after the initial heat moderates the temperature and cooks the fish gently.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes