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Whitings Au Gratin

A baked dish of whitings topped with gravy, shallot, parsley, anchovy sauce, lemon juice, cream, breadcrumbs, and a sauce of stock, port, and roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Whiting and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 236 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Whitings Au Gratin

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the whitings in a baking dish with the gravy.

  3. Sprinkle with shallot, parsley, seasoning, and anchovy sauce.

  4. Add lemon juice and cream, then cover with buttered paper.

Bake and brown

  1. Bake for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the paper, sprinkle breadcrumbs over the fish, and return to the oven to brown.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil stock, seasoning, anchovy sauce, and port together.

  2. Thicken the sauce with roux and strain through a fine sieve.

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. Whiting + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Whiting + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Whitings
The main fish, which cooks gently in the gravy and lemon juice.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the baked fish.
Roux
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fish.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping when browned in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and cream.

The step that matters

Browning the breadcrumb topping. Breadcrumbs need direct oven heat to toast and turn golden. Covering the dish with buttered paper first keeps the fish from drying out, so the paper must be removed before the topping goes on.

“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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