Name: Baked Halibut
Ingredients: 2 pounds halibut; ½ teaspoon salt; dash cayenne pepper; ½ cup milk

Why it works: Pepper and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 26,984 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Baked Halibut

Ingredients

2 pounds halibut
½ teaspoon salt
dash cayenne pepper
½ cup milk

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Place the halibut in a baking dish and season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Bake

Pour the milk over the fish.
Bake for 30 minutes, basting often.

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.

Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together26,984 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut: Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Milk: Adds moisture and gentle richness, helping keep the fish from drying out.

“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.