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Baked Halibut Steaks

Baked halibut steaks topped with oysters, salt pork, and buttered cracker crumbs, served with parsley and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 Halibut Steaks

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

  1. Wash and dry the halibut steaks.

  2. Butter a baking sheet and lay thin slices of salt pork on it.

Assemble

  1. Place one steak on the pork, pour lemon juice over it, and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Dip the oysters in melted butter, then in cracker crumbs, and place them on the fish.

  3. Top with the second steak, season as before, and lay slices of pork on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 to 40 minutes, basting 3 to 4 times with the pan juices and melted butter.

  2. Remove the pork from the top and cover with buttered crumbs.

  3. Serve when the crumbs are browned, garnished with parsley 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. Lemon + parsleytop 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Pork + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,255 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut steaks
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into moist, flaky portions.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and tender texture inside the dish.
Salt pork
Renders fat over the fish, adding savoury flavour and moisture.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on the top when baked with butter.
Butter
Carries richness and helps the crumbs brown while keeping the fish moist.

The step that matters

Basting during baking. Spooning pan juices and melted butter over the fish keeps the surface moist while the dish cooks, helping prevent the delicate halibut from drying out before the crumbs brown.

“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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