Name: Baked Halibut
Ingredients: 5 to 6 pounds thick halibut; strips of pork or small bits of butter; bread crumbs; water; drawn butter or egg sauce for serving

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Halibut

Ingredients

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

Wash and dry the halibut.

Bake and serve

Place the halibut in a baking pan with strips of pork or small bits of butter and sprinkle with bread crumbs.
Add a little water to the pan.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1.5 to 2 hours.
Serve with drawn butter or egg sauce.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,371 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut: Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to flaky, tender pieces as it bakes.
Strips of pork or butter: Adds fat that bastes the fish, keeping its surface moist and adding richness.
Bread crumbs: Forms a crust on top that helps the fish stay moist and adds light browning.

“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.