Name: Halibut with Bacon
Ingredients: 1 steak of halibut; ½ lb. bacon; pepper; coarse sea salt; a little flour

Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Halibut with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the bacon in a chafing dish for a few minutes.
Remove the bacon and sprinkle the halibut with pepper, salt, and flour.
Sauté the halibut in the bacon fat for 10 to 12 minutes.
Reheat the bacon and serve it with the halibut.

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.

Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 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

Halibut: Forms the main body of the dish; its flaky, moist flesh is the central element.
Bacon: Renders fat for sautéing and adds savory, smoky flavor to the fish.
Flour: Dusted on the halibut to help it brown and form a light crust while sautéing.

The step that matters

Sautéing the halibut in the bacon fat. Fish is delicate and dries out or breaks apart if overcooked, so it should cook just until opaque and flaky. Flour helps the surface brown and hold together, but heat should be steady enough to brown without scorching the fat.

“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.