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Halibut Stewed

A stewed halibut cooked in beer with butter, flour, onion, bay leaf, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Halibut Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash and dry the halibut thoroughly.

  2. Place the fish in a stewpan and barely cover it with beer.

  3. Add the onion, bay leaf, and a little salt and pepper.

  4. Bring gently to a boil.

Make the sauce

  1. Knead the butter and flour together until smooth.

  2. Add the butter-flour mixture in small pieces to the boiling stew.

  3. Simmer gently until the fish separates easily from the bone.

  4. Add lemon juice to the cooking liquid.

  5. Season to taste.

  6. Strain the liquid.

Serve

  1. Carefully transfer the fish to a hot dish.

  2. Pour a little around the fish.

  3. Serve the remaining sauce separately.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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, cooking gently in the beer until it flakes from the bone.
Beer
Forms the cooking liquid that gently poaches the fish and flavours the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when kneaded with butter and added in pieces.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the fish separates easily from the bone. Boiling vigorously toughens and dries the delicate flesh of fish. A gentle simmer cooks it evenly so it flakes cleanly while staying moist.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beer, fish, butter, flour, clove, lemon, pepper. 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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