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Halibut Steak Baked with Tomatoes

A halibut steak baked with a tomato sauce, butter, flour, and Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Halibut Steak Baked with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cook tomatoes with butter, flour, sugar, pepper, onion juice, salt, and minced green pepper for 15 minutes to make a rich sauce.

  2. Strain the sauce through a colander and let it cool.

Prepare the fish

  1. Marinate the halibut in olive oil and lemon juice for 1 hour.

  2. Place the halibut on a grating in a covered roaster.

  3. Pour the sauce over the halibut.

  4. Cover the roaster.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 12 minutes per pound in a good oven.

  2. Sift Parmesan cheese over the fish.

  3. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.

  4. Serve hot.

  5. Pour the sauce over the fish.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Tomatoes
Form the base of the sauce, adding moisture, acidity and body as they cook down.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cooked tomato sauce so it clings to the fish instead of running off.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, giving it a smoother, rounder flavour.
Halibut
The main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it bakes.
Parmesan cheese
Melts and browns on the surface, adding savoury flavour and a golden crust.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and helps tenderise it during marinating.

The step that matters

Covering the roaster while baking. The lid traps steam around the fish, so it cooks gently and stays moist. Overbaking past the stated time dries out the delicate flesh, so the timing matters.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, butter, flour, sugar, pepper, olive, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, flour, sugar, pepper, olive, 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.

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