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Baked Plaice

A baked plaice served with onions, saffron, and marjoram.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and saffron share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Plaice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the onions

  1. Slice the onions.

  2. Place the sliced onions in a fish tin with oil, salt, and pepper.

  3. Heat the onion mixture in the oven.

Prepare and bake the plaice

  1. Wash and dry the plaice.

  2. Notch the plaice as described.

  3. Lay the plaice on the hot onion mixture.

  4. Season the plaice.

  5. Sprinkle the plaice with marjoram.

  6. Dredge the plaice with flour.

  7. Mix saffron with water in a cup.

  8. Baste the plaice with the saffron mixture.

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. Marjoram + saffrontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + saffrontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they heat, forming a moist bed under the fish.
Oil
Carries heat and seasoning across the onions and helps prevent sticking.
Plaice
Provides the main fish, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Flour
Coats the fish surface, helping it brown and hold in moisture.
Saffron
Adds a distinctive aroma and golden colour to the basting liquid.
Marjoram
Adds a herbal aroma that complements the fish and onions.

The step that matters

Lay the plaice on the hot onion mixture. The onions must already be hot when the fish goes on, so the underside begins cooking immediately and the fish does not stick or cook unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, marjoram, flour, saffron):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, marjoram, flour, saffron. 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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