Skip to main content
Main

Planked Fish

Fish baked on a hardwood plank with butter, salt, pepper, and served with mashed potato border, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Planked Fish

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the fish with melted butter and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Place the fish skin side down on a hardwood plank.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes or until the fish is done.

  2. Press hot mashed potatoes through a pastry tube to create a border around the edge of the fish.

  3. Brown the potatoes in the oven.

  4. Garnish the fish with parsley and lemon before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main protein, which cooks through gently on the plank in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the fish stay moist and carry the seasoning.
Mashed potatoes
Form a piped border around the fish and brown in the oven for color and texture.

The step that matters

Baking the fish until done. Fish cooks quickly and can dry out if overbaked, so check that it is opaque and flakes easily at the thickest point before removing it from the oven.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, pepper, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, pepper, parsley, lemon. 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

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipes