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Broiled Whitings

Broiled Whitings are fish seasoned with pepper, coarse sea salt, and oil, then broiled and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Whiting and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 236 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Broiled Whitings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle the whitings with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Pour a little oil over them and let them marinate for 1–2 hours.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the whitings over the fire, turning them frequently.

  2. Serve with any sauce you like.

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. Whiting + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Whiting + peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Pepper and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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

Whitings
The main protein; it is the dish itself, cooked directly over the fire.
Oil
Coats the fish so it stays moist and browns evenly under high heat.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and draws out some surface moisture during marinating.

The step that matters

Turning the whitings frequently. Fish is delicate and lean, so frequent turning under direct heat helps it cook evenly and keeps the surface from scorching before the centre is done.

“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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