Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Baked Fish Without Dressing
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 the fish
Rub the clean fish with plenty of coarse sea salt and let it sit for 1 hour.
Wipe off the salt and rub the fish with lemon juice, letting it sit for another 30 minutes in a very cold place.
Split the fish down the back to open it flat and dredge with flour.
Bake and serve
Place the fish in a shallow tin, pour 3 tablespoons of fresh milk over it, and dot with butter or thin slices of fat salt pork.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 to 30 minutes.
Serve on a hot platter with hot cream or Hollandaise sauce poured around it.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,488 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Fish + milktop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,432 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fish
- Forms the main body of the dish, flaking into moist, tender pieces when baked.
- Flour
- Dry coating on the opened fish that helps it brown lightly and hold its surface.
- Fresh milk
- Adds moisture to the tin so the fish stays tender as it bakes.
- Butter
- Adds fat that enriches flavor and promotes gentle browning on the surface.
The step that matters
Baking the fish. Fish cooks quickly and dries out easily. Watching the time within the 20 to 30 minute range helps keep the flesh moist and flaky rather than tough.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, milk, butter, cream):
- Coconutfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, milk, butter, cream. 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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