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Broiled Whitings

Broiled Whitings are fish wrapped in buttered paper and broiled until the backbone separates, served with cold Maitre d’Hotel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Whiting and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 236 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Broiled Whitings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the broiler to a high setting.

  2. Wrap the whitings in a well-buttered sheet of wrapping paper, twisting or tying the ends.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the wrapped whitings for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Check if the backbone parts easily separate from the flesh; if so, they are ready.

  3. Serve with cold Maitre d’Hotel sauce in the back.

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. Whiting + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Whitings
Provide the fish flesh that cooks gently inside the wrapping, staying moist.
Butter
Coats the paper and fish, adding richness and helping prevent sticking and drying.
Maitre d’hotel sauce
Adds a cold, herby, buttery contrast to the hot broiled fish.

The step that matters

Checking doneness at the backbone. Whiting is lean and dries out quickly under high heat. Testing whether the backbone separates easily from the flesh helps show when the fish is cooked through without overcooking it.

“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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