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Halibut, Baked

A baked halibut fillet seasoned with salt, pepper, flour, and butter, served with its own cooking liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Halibut, Baked

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. Wash and dry the halibut thoroughly.

  2. Sprinkle liberally with coarse sea salt and black pepper, then dredge well with flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish in an earthenware baking dish, add the butter in small pieces.

  2. Bake gently at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

  3. Serve on a hot dish with the strained liquid from the fish poured around.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

Halibut
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through gently to become flaky and moist.
Butter or dripping
Adds fat that enriches the fish and helps keep its surface moist during baking.
Flour
Coats the fish so its surface browns and the cooking juices thicken into a light liquid.

The step that matters

Bake gently. Low, gentle heat cooks the fish through without drying out its proteins, which tighten and toughen when overheated. Keeping the oven moderate protects the tender, moist texture.

“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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