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Baked Halibut or Salmon

Baked halibut or salmon served with a ketchup and pungent sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Halibut or Salmon

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Soak the fish in cold water with a little coarse sea salt for 1 hour.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  3. Place a gridiron over a dripping pan with a little hot water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the fish in the hot oven.

  2. Butter the top of the fish just before it is done and brown it nicely.

  3. Bake small fish for about 30 minutes and large fish for about 1 hour.

  4. For the sauce, combine the dripping pan gravy with ketchup, pungent sauce, and lemon juice.

  5. Thicken the sauce with brown flour moistened with a little cold water.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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 or salmon
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through in the oven as the flesh turns opaque.
Butter
Melts over the top of the fish and promotes browning for a golden surface.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce made from the dripping pan gravy.
Brown flour
Thickens the sauce when moistened and cooked in the pan gravy.

The step that matters

Butter the top just before the fish is done. Adding butter too early lets it brown or burn before the fish is cooked through. Adding it near the end gives an even golden colour without scorching.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, ketchup, sauce, flour):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, ketchup, sauce, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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