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Broiled White Fish

Broiled white fish served with melted butter, crisp bacon, and sliced lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Broiled White Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split open and wipe the fish dry.

  2. Butter the broiler well.

  3. Place the broiler over a charcoal fire.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the fish for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Transfer to plates, pour melted butter over the fish, and garnish with crisp bacon and sliced lemon.

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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, tender flesh under heat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and keeps the fish from sticking to the broiler.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter. 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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