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Baking

Whiting Au Gratin

A baked dish of cleaned whiting fish topped with butter, flour, herbs, mushrooms, and breadcrumbs, finished with stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Whiting Au Gratin

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a dish, mix butter, flour, parsley, chives, mushrooms, pepper, and salt.

Assemble

  1. Lay the cleaned fish on top of the mixture.

  2. Cover the fish with the same seasoning and add more butter and grated bread crumbs.

Cook and serve

  1. Moisten with stock and let it stew slowly until it begins to stick to the dish.

  2. Serve in the dish it was baked in.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Flour + chivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chive + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Whiting fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in the seasoned liquid to stay moist.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the topping brown.
Flour
Thickens the buttery juices and stock into a light sauce.
Bread crumbs
Forms a topping that browns and adds a crisp texture.
Stock
Supplies moisture and savoury flavour as the fish stews.

The step that matters

Stewing the fish in stock. Slow, gentle stewing with a modest amount of stock cooks the fish through without drying it and lets the flour thicken the liquid into a sauce. Rapid boiling would toughen the fish and can break the sauce.

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, fish, butter, flour, parsley, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivethe original
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, fish, butter, flour, parsley, mushroom, pepper. 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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