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Baked Whiting

Baked Whiting is a fish baked with sherry, sweet herbs, butter, and flour.

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 ↓

Baked Whiting

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Bake the fish

  1. Skin the Whiting and place it in a buttered pie dish.

  2. Pour in the sherry and cover thickly with sweet herbs.

  3. Cover the dish with buttered paper and bake for about 10 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the butter and flour, stirring over heat until well mixed.

  2. Pour in the gravy from the dish where the fish was cooked.

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. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Whiting + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sherry + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,643 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Whiting + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Whiting
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, tender fish.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a sharp, wine-based flavour to the fish and its juices.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the flour cook into a smooth base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and absorbs the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Combining the butter and flour. Stirring the butter and flour over heat until fully mixed prevents lumps and cooks out the raw floury taste. Cooking the flour in the fat lets it thicken the gravy evenly.

“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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