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Steamed Halibut

Steamed halibut served with a butter sauce and sliced hard‑boiled egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Steamed Halibut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the halibut by wiping it with a cheesecloth wrung out of cold water.

  2. Place the fish in a strainer over a kettle of boiling water.

  3. Cover the strainer closely.

  4. Keep the water boiling until the fish is done.

  5. Check that the fish is cooked when the flesh leaves the bone.

  6. Take off the outside skin of the fish.

  7. Remove the fish to a hot serving dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt ¾ tablespoon butter.

  2. Add ¾ tablespoon flour to the melted butter and mix the butter and flour together.

  3. Gradually pour in ½ cup boiling water, stirring the sauce constantly.

  4. Season the sauce with salt.

  5. Add ¾ tablespoon butter in small pieces to the sauce.

  6. Add the sliced hard-boiled egg to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Pour the drawn butter sauce around 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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
Its flesh cooks gently by steam, staying moist and tender rather than drying out.
Butter
Melted into the sauce, it adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the drawn butter.
Flour
Cooked with melted butter, it thickens the water into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Hard-boiled egg
Its sliced white and yolk add body and a mild, rich flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling until the fish is done. Steam only cooks the fish while the water keeps boiling. If the kettle drops to a simmer or runs dry, the fish cooks unevenly or stalls, so keep the heat steady and check the flesh near the bone.

“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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