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Planked White Fish

A whole white fish is baked on a heated wooden plank with butter, water, salt, and cayenne, then garnished.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Planked White Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and place the plank inside to heat.

  2. Wipe the fish dry and place it skin-side down on the hot plank.

Bake and baste

  1. Bake the fish for 10 minutes.

  2. Baste the fish with a mixture of butter, water, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Continue baking the fish for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. Baste the fish every 10 minutes with the sauce.

Serve

  1. Remove the plank from the oven.

  2. Transfer the fish to a platter.

  3. Garnish with potato chips, parsley, and lemon slices.

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. Parsley + lemontop 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
Is the main protein that cooks gently on the plank and turns flaky when done.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown and stay moist while basting.
Hard wood plank
Heats up first and gives the fish a gentle, smoky aroma as it cooks.

The step that matters

Heating the plank before adding the fish. A hot plank sears the underside of the fish right away, so it cooks evenly and sticks less. Placing fish on a cold plank can make it soggy and cause it to stick.

“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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