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Baked Halibut Steaks

Baked halibut steaks topped with lemon butter and breadcrumbs, garnished with lemon slices and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Halibut Steaks

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 the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Lay the halibut in a buttered baking dish.

  3. Season the fish and sprinkle with lemon juice.

  4. Pour melted butter over the fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with greased paper and bake for about 15 minutes.

  2. Transfer to a hot serving dish, sprinkle with breadcrumbs, and garnish with lemon and parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Forms the main protein, which turns opaque and flakes as it cooks through.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping keep the lean fish from drying out in the oven.
Breadcrumbs
Add a browned, crisp topping and a contrast in texture to the soft fish.

The step that matters

Cover with greased paper and bake for about 15 minutes. Covering traps steam so the thick fish cooks gently and stays moist. Without the cover, the surface can dry out before the centre is cooked through.

“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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