Skip to main content
Main

Baked Whitings

Baked whiting fillets seasoned with parsley, nutmeg, cayenne, onion, and served with a lemon‑meat gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 Whitings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the fins and head from the fish.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a greased baking tin with the stock.

  2. Sprinkle with parsley, nutmeg, cayenne, and chopped onion.

  3. Cover with greased paper and bake at 400 °F (200 °C) for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the fish from the tin.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Make a thick brown gravy with the stock, adding lemon juice and meat extract.

  2. Pour the gravy around the fish and garnish with chopped egg and lemon slices.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Nutmeg + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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, cooked gently in its own steam and stock.
Meat extract
Adds savoury depth and a rich, dark colour to the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Covering the fish while it bakes. Covering with greased paper traps steam around the fish, so it cooks through gently and stays moist rather than drying out in the oven heat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, parsley, nutmeg, meat, lemon, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, parsley, nutmeg, meat, lemon, egg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes