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Planked Whitefish

A whitefish cooked on a greased oak plank, broiled with butter and salt, garnished with potatoes, parsley, and lemon.

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 Whitefish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean, wipe, and split the whitefish, then trim it into shape.

  2. Place the fish skin side down on a well-greased oak fish plank, which is 1.5 inches thick and 2 inches longer and wider than the fish.

  3. Brush the fish with melted butter and surround it with a border of coarse sea salt to prevent the plank from burning.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the fish under the gas flame for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove from the oven and scrape off the salt border.

  3. Spread the fish with more melted butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  4. Garnish with potatoes forced through a pastry bag, parsley, and lemon slices.

  5. Serve the fish on the plank placed on a large platter.

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. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Whitefish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through to flaky, moist flesh under the heat.
Melted butter
Adds moisture and richness, helping the fish stay tender and browning the surface.
Coarse sea salt
Forms a protective border that shields the plank edges from scorching during cooking.

The step that matters

Surrounding the fish with the salt border. The salt border keeps the exposed plank from burning under the broiler flame. Salt is packed around the fish, so it should be scraped off after cooking, before serving.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whitefish, butter, pepper, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whitefish, butter, pepper, parsley, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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