Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Baked Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Sprinkle the cleaned fish with coarse sea salt and let it sit for 1 hour.
Tie the fish with string and sprinkle flour over it.
Baste the fish with butter.
Place the fish on a wire rack in a dripping pan.
Bake
Bake for 1.5 hours.
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.
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Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,488 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Fish + flourtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,532 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
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
- Whole fish
- Forms the main body of the dish, setting from raw to flaky as it cooks.
- Flour
- Forms a light coating that helps the skin brown and crisp in the oven.
- Butter
- Adds moisture and richness, and promotes browning on the surface.
The step that matters
Salting and resting the fish. Salt seasons the flesh and draws out some moisture, which then dissolves salt and is partly reabsorbed, seasoning the fish more evenly. Resting it for the full hour lets this happen before baking.
“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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