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Baked Halibut or Salmon

A baked fish served with a ketchup and pungent sauce, garnished with parsley and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

  1. Bake the fish in the hot oven.

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

  3. Butter the top of the fish just before it is done.

  4. Brown the fish nicely.

Make the sauce and serve

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

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

  3. Garnish the dish with parsley sprigs and currant jelly.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Brown flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body without extra liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the top of the fish brown.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the fish's richness.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness, tang and savory depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Butter the top of the fish just before it is done. Adding butter late keeps it from burning while it adds fat and promotes even browning on the surface.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, ketchup, sauce, lemon, flour, parsley. 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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