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Small John Dories Baked

Baked small John Dory fish seasoned with salt, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Small John Dories Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Clean the John Dories and dry them with a cloth.

  2. Season the insides lightly with fine salt.

  3. Dredge a little flour on the fish.

  4. Place small bits of butter on the fish to keep them moist.

  5. Lay the fish singly on a flat dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°C) for 14 to 16 minutes.

  2. Serve with the same sauce as baked soles.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

John dory
Provides the main flesh that cooks through gently in the oven.
Flour
Light dusting helps the fish surface brown slightly and hold moisture.
Butter
Small pieces melt over the fish, adding fat that keeps the flesh moist.

“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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