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Baked Halibut Ok Salmon

A baked fish dish seasoned with salt, butter, catsup, pungent sauce, lemon, and served with a brown flour sauce and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Halibut Ok Salmon

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Soak the fish in cold water with a little coarse sea salt for 1 hour.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  3. Place a gridiron over a dripping pan with a little hot water.

Bake and baste

  1. Bake the fish in the hot oven.

  2. Bake small fish for about 30 minutes.

  3. Bake large fish for about 1 hour.

  4. Baste the fish with butter just before it is done.

  5. Brown the top of the fish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Combine the gravy from the dripping pan with catsup, pungent sauce, and lemon juice.

  2. Thicken the sauce with brown flour moistened with cold water.

  3. Garnish the dish with parsley sprigs and current jelly.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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, cooking through in the oven to become flaky and moist.
Butter
Adds fat for basting, promoting richness and browning on the surface of the fish.
Brown flour
Thickens the pan gravy when moistened with cold water, giving the sauce body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the pan juices.
Catsup
Contributes sweetness and tomato-based acidity to the pan sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with brown flour moistened with cold water. Flour must be mixed smoothly into cold water before being stirred into hot liquid; added dry or lumpy, it clumps and fails to thicken evenly.

“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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