Skip to main content
Main

Baked Halibut Steak

Baked halibut steak seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, cooked in pork fat and served with drawn butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Halibut Steak

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. Wash the halibut slices in salt water and dry on a cloth.

  2. Fry the salt pork in a pan until crisp on one side, then remove from the pan.

  3. On a plate, mix flour with pepper and salt, then rub this mixture on both sides of the halibut.

Bake and serve

  1. In the same pan, lay the halibut in the hot pork fat and place the crisped pork on top.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until the fish is crisp.

  3. Serve with drawn butter sauce.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, and its flesh cooks to a flaky texture.
Salt pork
Adds savory fat and flavor, and its crisped pieces give a salty, crunchy topping.
Flour
Forms a coating that helps the fish brown and crisp on the outside.
Butter
Makes a rich drawn butter sauce that adds fat and smoothness to each serving.

The step that matters

Drying the halibut before coating it in flour. Surface moisture stops the flour and seasoning from sticking evenly and prevents the coating from browning and crisping in the oven. Patting the fish fully dry first helps the crust form.

“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.

More baked halibut recipes

or Salmon 16with Tomato Sauce 5Steaks 4 See all 59 →

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes