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Broiled Trout

A trout seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and butter, then broiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Trout

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the trout immediately after catching.

  2. Season the fish with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Spread sweet butter over the trout.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the trout over a declining fire.

  2. Serve on hot plates.

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

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

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Trout
Is the main protein, cooked gently by broiling to become flaky and moist.
Sweet butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps keep the surface of the fish from drying out.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fish and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Broil the trout over a declining fire. Fish is delicate and cooks quickly, so overly intense heat can scorch the outside before the center is done. A gradually lowering heat lets the flesh cook through evenly while staying moist and tender.

“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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