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Whiting Au Gratin

A baked whiting topped with parsley, mushrooms, shallot, lemon, pepper, salt, bread crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Whiting Au Gratin

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

  1. Clean the whiting, remove the fins and head, and dry it thoroughly.

  2. Remove the bone starting from the head end.

  3. Butter an oven-safe dish.

  4. Chop the parsley, mushrooms, and shallot.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add the grated lemon, pepper, and salt to the chopped mixture and mix well.

  2. Spread half of the mixture in the buttered dish.

  3. Place the whiting on top of the mixture.

  4. Sprinkle the remaining mixture over the fish.

  5. Squeeze lemon juice over the fish.

  6. Sprinkle browned bread crumbs on top.

  7. Dot with butter.

  8. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Carefully transfer the fish to a clean dish.

  2. Pour brown stock around the fish.

  3. Serve.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Whiting
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the short bake.
Brown bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping that adds texture over the fish.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savoury flavour to the chopped mixture beneath the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brightens the mild fish.

The step that matters

Carefully transfer the fish to a clean dish.. The whiting is delicate and flakes easily after baking, so lifting it gently keeps it intact and keeps the crumb topping and mixture from breaking apart.

“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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