Name: Baked Halibut
Ingredients: 3 to 4 pounds halibut; coarse sea salt; black pepper; milk; egg sauce, cream sauce, or drawn butter for serving; hard-boiled eggs for garnish

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Baked Halibut

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

Remove the dark skin from the halibut by dipping it in boiling water and scraping it off.
Rub the flesh with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Place the fish in a baking pan.
Pour enough milk to cover the fish by 1 inch.

Bake and serve

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 1 hour, basting frequently with the milk.
Remove the fish from the oven.
Take out the bone and skin.
Place the fish on a serving dish.
Serve with egg sauce, cream sauce, or drawn butter, garnished with slices of hard-boiled eggs.

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.

Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together26,984 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 into moist, flaky flesh.
Milk: Poured around the fish and used for basting, it keeps the flesh moist while it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 1 hour, basting frequently with the milk. Halibut is lean and dries out quickly in dry heat. Frequent basting with the milk keeps the surface moist, and the fish is done when it flakes easily at the thickest point rather than after a fixed time alone.

“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.